IN THE WOODS 



AND 



ON THE SHORE 




RICHARD 



V 








^^^ 







IFn the Moobs 
anb on the Shore 



:^==^ 



^iJSi 



,-^v-r 




"Now although the great pleasure which I got 
from sport might seem to have distracted me from 
my art and my studies — and it really did so — 
yet in another sense it gave me much more than 
it took away, for every time I went out shooting, my 
health was much the better for it, the air putting 
fresh vigour into me. . . . Thus in the end my 
gun was more of a gain than a loss to me." — Ben- 
venuto Cellini. (1558 a. d.) 




y^-J^^-- 







THE DEATH OF THE BLACIC MOOSE. 



{S^e page 64) 



ITn tbe XKHoobe an6 
©n tbe Sbore 

By RICHARD D. WARE 




L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

BOSTON A" i* MDCCCCVIII 




Copyright, tgo8 
By L, C. Page & Company 

(incorporatkd) 



All rights reserved 



First Impression, May, 1908 



COLONIAL PRESS 

EUctrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simands &• C«. 

Boston, U.S. A. 



TO 

COMRADE OF THE HOME CAMP AND THE LEAN-TO 

TO REMIND HER OF HER FIRST CAMP-FIRES 

ON THE BIG RIVER 



IFntrobuction 




The desire to express the emotions roused by- 
successful achievement is a primal instinct in all 
sentient beings. The exulting savage shouted 
his war-whoop as he waved the trophy torn 
from his slain enemy and the victorious rooster 
still crows over the prostrate body of his op- 
ponent, noising his prowess abroad through the 
bam yard. Particularly is this true where the 
elements of combat or contest have entered 



X ITntroMiction 

into that which has been achieved, and in the 
primitive sports of hunting, fowHng and fishing 
something of these is ever present, rarely the 
combat to be sure in these days of repeating 
rifles and high power ammunition, but always 
the contest between the keen senses of the game 
and those of the hunter, less keen but directed 
by his higher intelligence. 

So it has come about that this desire for ex- 
pression has brought it to such a point that not 
only is it impossible for a sparrow to fall without 
due record, as has been written, but equally so 
for a grouse, a duck, a deer, a moose or any of 
the other beasts of the field and birds of the 
air which are the objects of the hunter's quest. 

The hunt is over, but the memory of it is still 
strenuously alive. The primal instinct comes 
surging up, transformed into an " irresistible 
impulse " to take pen in hand, and the deadly 
trigger finger, so late incarnadined, becomes 
smeared with ink as the story of How I did It is 
told again. 

And it is well that this is so. What would the 
catching of the big fish be without the fish story 
that is born of it ? What would the stalking of the 
big stag be without the story the wide spreading 



•ffntroDuctfon xi 

antlers tell every time one looks at them on the 
wall? 

There is a certain amount of sameness about 
all these stories of the chase and of the stream, 
and it is inevitable that this should be so, for each 
tells only of the pursuit and capture of the quarry 
by ways and means which have been rehearsed 
so many times before. 

By the same token there is a certain amount 
of sameness in the doing of the things them- 
selves, but the fascination of it is never ending 
for him who has travelled on the trail of " The 
Feet of the Young Men." 

So in a less degree it has seemed to me as to 
the stories. When I have been unable to go 
after my own ducks, the next best thing was to 
learn how the other fellow bagged his. When 
I could not hunt my own moose, it has been a 
satisfaction to read how the bull gave answer to 
the call of one more fortunate. 

These sketches of happenings in the woods 
and on the shore are but narratives of personal 
experience with a little of observation and com- 
mentary. They were written chiefly for the 
pleasure of recalling them and the scenes of their 
occurrence more vividly to my own mind in 



xu 



Untro^uction 



these after days, and with the second thought 
that as they had interested me so much, they 
might interest others a Httle. 

Many of the pictures were taken with my own 
camera, but I am indebted to my friends James 
S. Lee, Dwight Blaney, James C. Hopkins, Joseph 
W. Lund and WilHam A. L. Bazeley for a number 
of them. 

It should perhaps be said that the picture of 
the wotinded caribou is a photograph of a water- 
coloured enlargement from my own original film, 
which could not be found when it was wanted. 
The artist added a few posies to the foreground, 
but apart from that and the brush marks it is 
an exact reproduction of the event. 

R. D. w. 




Contents 




Mttb tbe 1RewtounMan& Sta^s 




1 


Ube JSlacf? {fboosc 




. 52 


Sbore BirO Sbootina 






, 69 


Ube Beacb 






106 


Milt) ff owl Becoming 






109 


TLvoo Bears 






134 


Zbc ©pentng of tbe Season , 






158 


Ube XIrout of •Repisicjult . 






186 


Brant Sbooting at /IDonomo^ 






209 


Batteri? Sbooting 






239 


Ube ftunteb 






, zes 



%iQt of llUustiatfons 




PAGE 



The Death of the Black Moose (See page 64) Frontispiece 

Map of Newfoundland Facing 2 

JohnStroud, WITH Forty -THREE Point Head . . 6 

Caribou Stag 24 

Caribou and Ptarmigan 29 

Over the Barrens 30 

Map of Nepisiguit River. — Western Section 

Facing 52 
Lookout and Western End of Pond Back of the 
Elbow. — Cow Moose in Pond Back of the 

Elbow 59 

XV 



xvi xtst ot HUustrations 

Hard Pulling. — Retrieved 

Head of Moose Killed on the Nepisiguit in Sep 

TEMBER, 1906 

On THE Flats. — A Marsh Stand 

Lunch! . 

After the Flight. — On the Beach . 

" The Diapason of the Mighty Sea " 

Duck Stands 

Setting Out Goose Decoys. — Duck " Flyers 

The Callers. — After a Successful Shot 

William Bateman Crossing " 44 " 

Spying the Hills 

On the Trail. — Blue Ledge Lake . 

Beaver House at Blue Ledge Lake. — Double 
Beaver Dam, Showing Lower Abutment for 
Protection against Ice 

Heaving Him Out. — On the River . 

Homeward Bound 

Head of the Grand Falls ...... 

The Scow. — Leaving the Carry above the Nar- 
rows 

Coming Up the Narrows 

Map of Nepisiguit River. — Eastern Section 

Facing 

Above the Elbow. — Lyman's Hole .... 

Outer Beach of Cape Cod, Near Chatham . 

The Brant Club. — The Curtis Bar {See page 222) 

George. — In the Box 

A Few of the Brant 



PAGB 

66 

68 
72 
98 

103 
108 

no 
112 
120 

144 

147 
158 



160 

183 
185 

187 

188. 

190 

192 

195 
209 
211 
217 
234 



Xist ot IfUiistrations xvu 

PAGE 

The Battery. — An Off Morning . . . <, 246 
Setting Out Decoys in Deep Water. — Taking Up 

Decoys 255 

" Breasted the Force of the Stream," Etc. . . 275 




Hn the iMoob^ anb 
on the Shore 




Mitb tbe mcw)foun^lan^ Stags 

THINK it was in '96 that I happened 
into Frazar's workshop in Boston and 
saw there the most remarkable set of 
caribou antlers I had ever gazed upon. I was 
told they had come from Newfoundland, but 
that seemed very far away in those days, and 
even on such evidence it was not until 1901 
that things so shaped themselves that a trip 
could be arranged. My friend Talbot committed 
himself to the undertaking, and I started prepara- 
tions by reading everything I could find bearing 
on the natural conditions of the country and the 
habits and range of the game during the month 
of September. It soon appeared that there was 
very little material at hand which would give 

1 



2 Hn tbe 1KIloot)0 ant) on tbe Sbore 

the required information, but the great im- 
pression gained from the sources which were 
available was that as winter approached there 
was a great general migration of all the caribou 
from the northern part of the island " where 
they feed and bring forth their young " to the 
southern part, and that in the spring they went 
back north again for the laudable purposes men- 
tioned. The cause of these migrations was given 
as climatic like that of the migration of the birds. 
It seemed obvious, therefore, that during the 
simimer the beasts were all as far north as they 
could get, which would mass them in the great 
peninsula which makes the northern end of the 
island, and that our trip would have to be planned 
for that country or for some district no great 
distance to the south of it. On the evidence it 
seemed as absurd to think of hunting in the 
southern part of the island at that time of year 
as it would be to set out plover decoys on Cape 
Cod in January and for the same reason, — that 
the game had migrated and had not yet returned. 
The time at our disposal appeared to be too 
early in the season for himting in the country 
accessible from the railroad, and so after much 
poring over the map it was decided that the only 



PROVINCE OF 
QUEBLC 




A T LANTIC OCEAN 



MAP OF NEWFOUNDLAND, 



"mitb tbe iRewtounblant) Stags 3 

thing to do was to get a fishing boat at Bay of 
Islands and go north up the coast until we reached 
some point from which the interior would be 
accessible. By good fortune, in July, before we 
had made final arrangements, I learned that 
the friend of a friend was fishing near a station 
on the railroad in the southeastern part of the 
island. This was a chance for something definite, 
and he was written to. In his reply he stated 
that he saw caribou nearly every day. That 
seemed impossible, for, according to what I had 
read as to the migration of the animals, there 
ought not to have been a caribou within three 
hundred miles of him. He was cross-examined, 
but refused to be shaken, and advised us to take 
his guides after he was through, and come and 
see for ourselves. We took the chance, and the 
sunrise of the 30th of August found us on the 
deck of the swift little steamer that nms across 
to the island from Sydney, watching the rugged, 
precipitous coast line of the great island which 
lay before us. 

After the first glimpse one has of the great 
cliffs back of Port-aux-Basques one feels how 
out of the ordinary experience it all is. Some of 
the scenery is superb. Some of it is beautiful in 



4 In tbe MOO&S anD on tbe Sbore 

the way that woods and streams and lakes are 
always beautiful, but most of it so full of the 
stem, wild grandeur which space and desolation 
give as to be almost oppressive. Those vast 
rolling expanses of boulder-strewn bog and barren 
have an indescribable beauty and picturesqueness 
entirely their own, some idea of which may per- 
haps be gathered from the remark of the Canadian 
drummer across the car, who described it as being 
the most God-forsaken country he had ever seen. 
Since the completion of the railroad, parts of 
the vast interior of the country have been opened 
up which otherwise would have remained practi- 
cally inaccessible to any one who did not have 
plenty of time and a considerable equipment at 
his disposal, and even now there are districts 
which never have been explored and probably 
never will be. There are but few rivers available 
for even canoe navigation, owing to the abruptness 
of the water-sheds from the lakes in the interior, 
and most of them are little more than brooks in the 
summer. Packing overland through bog at the 
rate of ten or perhaps a dozen miles a day hardly 
comes under the head of an amusement for a 
vacation hunting trip, and the only expedition of 
the kind that I ever heard of arrived at the 



Mitb tbe 1FlewfounMan& Staas 5 

destination on one day, started back the next 
and starved the last two before getting back to 
the depot camp. It is practically impossible for 
a small party to travel any distance overland 
through such a country and pack in sufficient 
food, together with the usual camp necessities, 
to permit any extended stay. 

It was an eighteen hour journey in the little 
narrow-gauge train after leaving Port-aux- 
Basques before arriving at our real starting point, 
the station of Terra Nova. There we found our 
head guide, John Stroud of Alexander Bay, with 
a cook and three packers, and early on the morning 
of September ist we started off bound for the 
country to the westward of Terra Nova lake. 

Just a few words in Stroud's memory, for my 
sturdy old friend died about a year ago. He 
was born on the island and was somewhat over 
fifty years old when I knew him. He was a thick- 
set, powerful man, one of the breed that lifts 
flour barrels with the teeth in the fulness of 
youthful strength. He had trapped and hunted 
at all seasons all his life, for game laws are a 
somewhat new institution with the New^otind- 
landers. While the railroad was building he had 
hunted caribou all along the line to supply the 



6 Hn tbe MooOs anD on tbe Sbore 

workmen with fresh meat, and he knew the 
creatures as the shepherd knows his sheep. Nature 
was an open book to him, and unfortunately it 
was the only one that he could read, for the 
mental activity and retentive memory of the 
man were remarkable, untutored as they were. 
Nothing out of the ordinary would happen but 
what he would start on the back trail for the cause 
of it, and like the Pears' soap baby, he wasn't 
happy till he got it. Some of his conclusions 
would be somewhat startling when he would 
announce them after much obvious mental stress, 
but this would be only when some bit of false 
science or local superstition crept in as a premise 
to his reasoning. When it was a question of 
Nature's laws and forces, which he had studied 
and with which he had struggled all his life, his 
theories were pretty nearly facts. For example, 
distances continually seemed longer than they 
really were, and a tree fringed " lead " half a 
mile across would seem twice as wide, or an 
animal seemingly a mile off would prove to be 
about half that distance away as one made the 
stalk. Stroud figured it out that as the native 
trees were about half as high as those to which 
our stranger eyes were accustomed, they gave 




JOHN SIKOLl), VVnil lOKI V - 1 IIKl-l- I'OIM HKAD. 



nmttb tbe IRewfounManC) Sta^s 7 

the impression to us of being twice as far away 
as they really were, and as the sky line always 
figures, consciously or unconsciously, in one's 
calculations of distance, the error in our calcula- 
tions came from this false premise. I have very 
little doubt that this was the exact truth of the 
matter. In his great experience he had learned 
innimierable things which apparently no one else 
knew. We argued to him conclusively how it 
was impossible on any anatomical theory that a 
caribou stag should have a flat triangular bone 
in its heart. He showed us the bone in the next 
one which was killed. No one could have asked 
for a more jovial and enthusiastic companion 
or better huntsman, or a more strong and willing 
worker. The whole of him was at our disposal, 
offered with a generosity as big and strong as 
was the man himself. 

Our two dories, heavy " bankers," were well 
filled with our camp equipment, so Talbot and I 
decided to walk around the shore of the lake with 
Stroud, a distance of about six miles, and meet the 
boats at the mouth of the stream w^hich flows 
into it from George's Pond. The southern shore 
is a sandy promenade, but it w^as unavailable for 
us for our destination, owing to a long arm of the 



8 irn tbe Moot)6 ant) on tbe Sbore 

lake, which would have to be doubled. The 
northern shore is a succession of rocks and ledges 
with stretches of glacier-strewn boulders in be- 
tween. It was hard-scrabble all the way, and a 
pretty vigorous breaking-in process, but we finally 
did it and arrived at the sandy point in time to 
" bile " at noon. Then came the two miles up 
the stream, warping the heavy dories through 
the rapids and across deep pools such as fisher- 
men dream about, apparently without a fish in 
them so far as we could discover, until we reached 
the pond. We crossed to the upper end and there 
made our first camp, about a mile from the edge 
of the " rocky ground " to the north which we 
were to hunt the next day. The weather changed 
during the night and it was gloomy enough when 
we turned out, with intermittent spits of rain 
dripping from skies even more leaden than they 
usually seem in those early hours. Stroud had 
planned to take our whole force along, which was 
rather contrary to my own ideas of successful still 
hunting, so I tossed with Talbot for the first shot, 
winning it, and we marched out in Indian file up 
through the wet undergrowth and swinging boughs 
to the barren grounds. As we went up the steep 
slope the trees soon became less thickly planted 



Mftb tbe mewfounManO Stags 9 

and the green moss of the woods gradually gave 
place to the gray carpet of the upland. The 
hardwood growth stopped entirely about half-way 
up the slope, and at the top the forest had 
become but a few scattered larches and spruces 
along the edge of the great barrens which we 
overlooked. It was a remarkable transition in a 
distance which added no more than three or four 
hundred feet altitude from the level of the lake. 
As the woods grew more open we came upon a 
network of caribou paths trodden way below the 
surface of the moss. We finally stopped by a 
big boulder which commanded the upper part of 
the barren, and Stroud went up for an observation. 
In a moment he motioned to us. We were beside 
him with a jump, and following his finger we saw 
three brownish animals walking slowly about on 
a rocky ridge about a quarter of a mile away. 
They were all does, but Stroud thought that 
perhaps there might be a stag with them, lying 
down behind some boulder, and took us in tow 
to investigate. We came up within forty yards 
of them, where we watched them awhile, and then 
left them, still feeding, and went back to the other 
men. From there we kept on across the barren 
to the north and then turned cast along the 



10 irn tbe MOO&S anb on tbe Sbore 

edge of the forest on the farther side. Within a 
mile we saw four more does, one with two fawns 
with her. All at once Stroud stopped suddenly, 
nearly making ten-pins of our serpentine pro- 
cession, and pointed to the top of a ridge not 
far away. There was a caribou, — unquestion- 
ably a stag, as we could see his antlers outlined 
against the sky. In a moment he disappeared 
over the brow of the ridge, and Stroud and I 
went after him. When we put our heads up we 
foimd he had stopped a short distance down, 
within easy shot. He looked very good to me, for 
he had the biggest horns I had ever seen on a 
caribou at large. But Stroud stayed my hand. 
" Only eighteen points," he whispered, " not big 
enough." It took some self-restraint, but on his 
further assurance that the stag was but an infant 
from the Newfoundland standpoint, we let the 
excitement of the chase give way to the pleasures 
of a feast of great blueberries from a patch in 
which we found we were lying, which we ate, 
while the stag browsed on his favourite moss a 
few yards below us. A puff of wind must have 
taken our scent to him, for of a sudden up went 
his head and he trotted off with a snort. 

The rest of the day was uneventful, for we saw 



Mttb tbe mewfounDlant) Stags ii 

but two more caribou, both does, though we made 
a complete circmt of the barren back to camp, 
over at least fifteen miles of bog and moss, for 
Stroud was anxious that we should begin well if 
covering ground could accomplish it. 

The day's experience had convinced him that 
there was no use in hunting that country again 
for some time, and the next morning we broke 
camp to move to more extensive hunting grounds 
to the westward. The men took the dories about 
four miles up a stream coming into the upper end 
of the pond, while we went across on the chance 
of starting a stag in the woods, where Stroud was 
convinced they still were. We cached most of 
our belongings by the dories, to be brought into 
camp later, and started up the long slope to the 
highland with what we could pack on our backs. 
About the middle of the afternoon we arrived at 
the edge of the new hunting ground, a wide valley 
in the upland dotted with scattered clumps of 
trees along its slopes and stretching westward 
as far as one could see. We were going through a 
small grove or " droch," the Newfoundland term 
for it, when Stroud threw down his pack. " Well, 
b'ys, here's lunch," he said. Beside us were 
twenty or more great red mushrooms looking as 



12 flu tbe MooDs an& on tbe Sbote 

poisonous and deadly as so many rattlesnakes, 
but John gathered them, fried them with strips 
of bacon, and they were delicious, tasting some- 
what like the most delicate calf's liver with a 
spicy flavour of their own. 

As we went along the southern edge of the 
barren later in the afternoon we saw a doe feeding 
along towards us, and as our prospective camp 
was near it seemed a most convenient chance to 
lay in a supply of fresh meat. We sat on our 
packs behind a wooded point and waited. Talbot 
was appointed executioner, as he wished to see 
what his Krag carbine, recently back from the 
Philippines, would do as a sporting rifle. In a 
short time the caribou suddenly appeared around 
the bushes not thirty yards away. She stopped 
and gazed curiously at the strange- looking crea- 
tures sitting in the grass. The shot was such 
an easy one that it seemed inevitable that the 
creature should drop at the first fire, for my 
friend was a good shot, — but she didn't. 

" Lower, Cap'n," said Stroud. 

The second shot had the same lack of result 
and the caribou still stood where she first stopped. 

*' Lower, Cap'n," said the guide again, and 
this time a tuft of hair went off her back just over 



XKIlitb tbe IRewtounManD Stags 13 

the shoulder. She turned and started off at this, 
but stopped in mid-career with a bullet in the 
right place at last. The trouble doubtless was 
that the service sights carried the ball higher 
than one would suppose for such a close shot, 
so that the usual aim on the shoulder was in 
reality too high. It was fortimate that he found 
this out so soon. 

We were less than a mile from the " droch " 
in which we were to camp, — a patch of spruce 
with a brook gurgling along beside it, and sheltered 
from the wind by a high ledge which overlooked 
a wide expanse of the valley, making an admirable 
lookout. Well before nightfall we had the tents 
pitched, paths cleared between them out to the 
brook and to the lookout, and a mighty meal 
sizzling and bubbling over the fire. It grew cold 
soon after sunset, so cold that ice formed during 
the night, early as it was in the season, and the 
men soon adjourned to their tent which had a 
stove in it, leaving us at our camp-fire. Shortly 
after, a most remarkable series of sounds came 
issuing from the glowing canvas walls. George 
was singing. He had begun on a typical New- 
foundland ballad of interminable length telling 
of shipwreck and disaster " up on theLabrado ' " 



14 fn tbe MooDs an5 on tbe Sbore 

with a chorus in which all hands came in strong. 
The solo was a weird banshee wail of a tune, 
and the chorus of the five men's lusty voices, 
singing in the dialect of their native bay and 
each giving a rendering to the music entirely 
his own, was indescribable. The third repetition 
ended in what sounded like a howl of mortal 
agony. 

" Let go his hair," yelled Talbot from the fire. 

There was silence for a moment and then a 
great burst of laughter from the songsters. 

" Come in where it's warm," cried Stroud, 
opening the tent door, and we joined our worthy 
retainers for an evening's entertainment I shall 
never forget. There were more songs by George, 
quaint ballads of the coimtry, its people and their 
hardships and perils, crude and rough enough, 
but vividly descriptive; stories of caribou hunts 
and exploring expeditions from Stroud; yarns 
of " swilin' " (sealing) on the ice after " harps " 
and " hoods " from the soft-spoken flaming 
haired Rich, finishing up with a short council of 
war as to future plans. We decided to hunt in the 
neighbourhood of camp the next day while the 
men brought in the rest of our baggage and pro- 
visions, and the day after that to go westward 



TRaitb tbe IRewfounMan^ Staas i5 

for two or three days in the upper part of the 
valley. We started out early and had hardly 
emerged from our grove before we saw three 
caribou, one a spike-horn. Passing them to lee- 
ward, leaving them undisturbed, we came upon 
two does a bit fiuther on. Later in the morning 
we saw a fawn of the year on a hillside in our line 
of march and walked up in plain sight to within 
twenty feet of him in lock-step behind Stroud, who 
grunted caribou talk to the little fellow as we 
approached him. He stood and gazed in big- 
eyed wonder at the strange six-legged creature 
that spoke the language of his race, and finally 
merely trotted reluctantly to one side and watched 
us as we passed by. We hunted about five miles 
up the valley through the rocky ridges which 
made its southern boundary, but saw no more 
caribou nor any sign of big stags. A bear had 
been blueberrying on a hill rather recently and 
we sent one of the men back with a bait for him, 
but it was never touched while we were in the 
country. 

Stroud was a good deal disappointed that we 
had not had a chance at a big stag yet, though 
he felt it was still a little early for them to be out 
of the woods. He pinned his faith on the coming 



16 Hn tbe "Caoo^s auD on tbe Sbore 

expedition and the cook was kept busy baking 
iron-clad biscuit all the afternoon for the next 
day's trip. We started off early in the morning 
with three of the men and light packs, the other 
two going out to Terra Nova for more flour and 
other supplies which were obviously going to 
give out before the hunt was over. We kept up 
on the ridges we had hunted the day before and 
then struck across the valley to the northwest, 
headed for some rocky ridges and barrens lying 
between Island Pond and Deer Lake. After 
leaving the higher land and coming down to the 
level of the valley, the travelling was awful, and 
one sank into the wet bog nearly to the knees at 
every step. Small ponds, or " flashets " in the 
vernacular, glittered in the green expanse in 
every direction, nearly all of them showing signs 
of having been the homes of breeding geese not 
long before. Twice w^e put up flocks which had 
not yet gone south. At one we saw where a 
lynx had raided the helpless goslings, leaving 
the marks of his pads among the scattered feathers 
in the sun-dried mud where he had pounced upon 
them, as evidence of the tragedy. Scattered 
through the valley were wooded " islands " 
which served to screen our advance, and as we 



mitl) the 1RevvfounMan& Stags i7 

neared the higher land we began seeing caribou 
continually in the openings between them, but 
still no stags except an occasional spike-horn. 

We reached the ridges at last and found them 
to be a succession of bare boulder-strewn hills 
with wooded runs between them, separating 
two beautiful lakes. We took an observation 
from the first height. I happened to be the 
Argus-eyed one and soon discovered a stag 
standing motionless on a ridge about half a mile 
away. He looked like a good one and I started 
after him, as I had not yet fired m}'- " first shot," 
leaving the others on the sunny side of a big 
boulder. These boulders with which the country 
is strewn make the only cover one can get for a 
stalk over such barren wastes, but by keeping 
behind them as they served, with frequent ser- 
pentine wrigglings when they didn't, I finally 
got within range only to find that he was no 
larger than the one we had seen on our first day's 
hunt. He was somewhat surprised to see me when I 
stood up, and after gazing at me intently for a few 
moments he started off at a swinging pace in the 
direction from which we had come. I could see 
our trail through the grass and moss of the bog 
where we had passed nearly an hour before and 



18 fn tbe Moobs an& on tbe Sbore 

watched him as he approached it. The stag came 
within a few feet of it, stopped short and snorted, 
and then, whirling on his hind legs, was off at a 
gallop in the opposite direction. It was an 
unusually good chance to observe how keen the 
sense of smell of the caribou is, and how much 
more they rely on it to warn them of danger than 
they do on their eyesight, which must be defective 
from what I observed of it. The stag had seen me 
clearly and had shown no particular signs of 
fright, while what was left of the scent in our 
trail in the wet moss had filled him with fear for 
his life. I went back to the others, and we 
" biled " in a sheltered nook in the rocks where 
the wind did not blow and the sun did shine, two 
most important qualifications for a resting-place 
on those bleak highlands. We were smoking our 
pipes afterwards, somewhat careless after our 
continued ill luck, when we saw a doe coming 
upon a ridge a few hundred yards away where she 
finally lay down in the sun. It was a good chance 
to get a picture at short range, and as it was in 
our line of march we started off again. I gave 
Stroud my rifle, and climbed up the ridge to within 
a few yards of where she lay and snapped her. 
She jumped and I took another wing shot with 



mitb tbe •WewtounMan^ Stags 19 

the little camera as she went down the ridge into 
a strip of woods. The others came up and I 
changed the camera for the rifle again. I hap- 
pened to be in the lead as we followed a caribou 
path into the woods when I suddenly saw a pair 
of great tossing horns through the branches just 
ahead of us, and then the head and shoulders of 
a stag. I fired and the beast kept on. It was 
like shooting partridges in thick cover. I fired 
again as I got a second glimpse of him, and there 
was a crash in the underbrush and a heavy thud. 
Then there was more crashing and a stag came 
dashing through the trees on my right, quartering 
back. I shouted to Talbot and the Krag opened 
up. The stag was going like an express train 
through the spruces and larches, and I soon lost 
sight of him from my position in the thick brush. 
I was not sure just what had happened to the 
first one, but pressed forward, and in a moment 
almost fell over the great beast lying there stone 
dead with a bullet behind his ear. 

" How did you miss him? " came my friend's 
voice from the thicket. 

" I didn't," I shouted back. 

He had supposed that there was but one stag 
in the run, and when the second one appeared 



20 irn tbe imiooDs an& on tbe Sbore 

had waited for me to shoot, which accounted for 
his failure to score, — a fortunate thing as it 
turned out, for neither of the stags carried unusual 
heads. My beast was a large animal with a not 
large but very even pair of antlers, with 26 points 
and still in velvet, which settled the question to 
Stroud's satisfaction that the stags were still in 
the woods. There was a good camping ground 
near by, and as it was still early we took a tramp 
over some of the nearer ridges while the men 
looked after the game and got things ready, but 
saw no more game except a flock of geese which 
rose like quail out of a blueberry patch on a bare 
rocky hillside. 

Stroud had cleaned the head at our return. 

The velvet had peeled off very easily, and after 
a few rubs with some alder twigs they looked as 
if they had been burnished by their former owner. 
It was a cold night for one blanket and the brush 
lean-to, and we were up by sunrise the next 
morning. Our course lay along the northwest 
side of the valley. About nine o'clock in the 
morning we saw our first real herd, a company of 
sixteen standing outlined against the sky on the 
top of a bare hill. There was one good stag among 
them, and Talbot started off on the stalk with 



TKaitb tbe IKlewtounOlanD Stags 21 

Stroud. The wind was from us to the caribou 
and the hunters had to make a long detour to 
make their approach. They soon disappeared 
over the ridge. I watched the animals for a 
while as they stood there on the hill, but nothing 
happened. The two men with me were soon 
sound asleep, and before long I had joined them, 
for the ground was soft and the sun was warm. 
Suddenly I was awake again. I had either 
heard a shot or had dreamed it. The caribou had 
disappeared from their hill, but in a moment I 
saw them off to the right of it headed to pass 
within a couple of hundred yards beyond the 
next ridge from me. I sprinted to head them off 
as they disappeared down the slope, but some- 
thing turned them and when I reached the top 
of the ridge they were scattered, tails on, out of 
range for anything except random shooting, 
so I let them run. I could see the stalkers standing 
out in the barren about a mile away, so I woke 
up my men and we started for them. Talbot 
had a good stag with thirty-one points on his 
horns, which were still in velvet like the first one. 
It turned out that as they were stalking the 
herd, they had seen three more caribou, two stags 
and a doe, much easier to approach, and had 



22 irn tbe MooOs anb on tbe Sbore 

turned off for them. There was almost no cover 
and the shot had been a long one, but it was a 
hit and the stag had dropped. Talbot told me 
that the creature was on his feet again in a few 
moments and started off with the others, they 
prodding him with their horns when he tried to 
lie down again. In spite of their efforts he finally- 
got within shooting distance again and it was this 
last shot which I had heard. 

This was most satisfactory. We boiled the 
kettle, dressed the stag, and decided that as we 
had had luck enough for one trip and could easily 
get to camp before night, we would go home with 
our spoils. 

It was well along in the afternoon when we 
came upon some very large and very fresh stag 
tracks going on ahead of us as we tramped along 
in single file on a deeply trodden trail. According 
to the tracks there were at least two large stags 
ahead of us, and possibly three. I moved up to 
the head of the procession, as it would be my 
next shot under our alternating arrangement. 
The big tracks kept on until we finally lost them 
in a particularly wet bog by a wooded island on 
our right, from which a long strip of brush jutted 
out parallel to our trail. I stopped at the end of 



Mttb tbe 1FlewfounMan& Stags 23 

the bushes and looked over them into the bog 
beyond. There were three stags, the nearest one 
with a wide spreading pair of antlers, which, with 
his heavy body and snow white neck, showed he 
was the kind we were looking for. I stopped the 
others with a gesture, and they sank down in 
the moss while Stroud crept up and joined me. 
He took a quick look at the chances for approach 
and we started back on our tracks, turning 
through the brush at the lower end of the w^ooded 
island. When we got to the very edge of it the 
stags had become suspicious and were moving off 
but were still within easy shot. At the first shot 
the big stag went down on his off shoulder, but 
was up again the next instant. A second shot 
brought him down again with both fore legs 
under him. The other two stags had trotted off 
a short distance and were watching us, but their 
heads were so inferior to the big one that was 
down that I did not trouble them. We leaped 
out of the brush and came up to the game. He 
gathered his great haimches under him and gave 
a tremendous leap, repeating it as he fell with 
both fore legs doubled under his body. I found 
I could keep up with him easily enough, and as 
he looked entirely fit in some positions it occurred 



24 nn tbe 11XIloot)B an& on tbe Sbore 

to me to try to get a picture of him while still 
alive. I carried the little camera inside my shirt, 
and of course it had worked around on my back 
to the most inaccessible spot it could reach. The 
caribou was ploughing along with his great leaps, 
I doing my best to keep alongside, but I finally 
extricated the kodak and got two snap shots of 
him. The setting sun and the distant forest for 
a background with the great wild creature strug- 
gling against his fate made a picture that one could 
never forget, and I was fortunate enough with 
the little camera to keep it in all its wonderful 
picturesqueness . 

This last head had an unusual spread and 
height of beam, though but thirty-two points and 
but one brow antler. Its teeth as well as the 
bluntness of the points showed that the stag was 
a very old one, but in splendid condition, with 
great layers of fat extending over its haunches 
and well up on to the saddle. The horns were 
entirely clean of velvet, — the first stag we had 
seen in this condition, this being September sixth. 

It was only about three miles across the valley 
to camp, for which I was duly grateful, as I had 
to carry the big head myself, all the rest being 
well loaded down with our other belongings. 



IKIlitb tbe 1FlewfounMan^ Stags 25 

We felt that our hunt had been a success, even 
if we had no more good fortune, and took the 
next day off to dress the heads, though we kept 
on the watch at the lookout in case anything 
should insist on coming to us. As it turned out 
it was not until the following Tuesday that we 
took the trail again, still to the westward, but on 
our own side of the valley, to the ridges between 
Island Pond and John's Pond. After a few miles 
of travelling we separated, Stroud and the rest 
taking a straight course to an old camping ground 
where he had once been with Paul du Chaillu 
some three years before, while George and I swung 
off towards Island Pond to circle back to them 
later on. The country was more wooded than 
our first hunting grounds and the " leads " more 
narrow. We saw three stags, each about the 
size of the first one I had killed, all within fair 
shot, but none of them were large enough now, 
and they trotted away after the usual investiga- 
tion of the interlopers. George knew no more of 
the lay of the land than I did, and in trying for 
a short cut we got well tangled up between two 
ponds in some thick timber, but we finally came 
(3ut on the ridges again and found Stroud watching 
for us a short way from our new camp. The men 



26 Hn tbe TRUooDs anO on tbe Sbore 

had been busy patching up the old bark or " rind " 
lean-to, and it was in fine shape when he got in. 
They had had quite an adventure a short time 
before. Stroud had been sitting behind a boulder 
on the ridge where we had found him, when he 
heard some footsteps behind him. He turned, 
expecting to see one of the party, and found a 
two- year- old black bear walking along, nosing at 
the blueberry patches. The bear saw him at the 
same instant and bolted for the nearest timber, 
w^hich happened to be our birch grove. Into it 
he went and landed in the middle of the camp 
before he knew it. The cook saw him first and 
let fly a volley of clattering tins which he was 
tinpacking. The elderly Jacob was nearly knocked 
off his legs as the beast went by him, but recovered 
in time to help him along with a parting kick, 
while " Rich " hurled the axe after him so far 
into the brush that he thought it was gone for ever 
when he went to hunt for it. Talbot was reading 
by the fire when the trouble began and looked up 
just as the bear was about to hurdle his legs He 
jumped and the bear jumped, wheeling behind 
the tree against w^hich my friend had been leaning, 
and by the time he got his rifle the bear must have 
been miles away according to the estimate given 
of his speed. 



Wiitly tbe 1Re\vtounMan& Sta^s 27 

It showered a little in the afternoon and we 
waited until it cleared before starting out, Talbot 
and Stroud going down into a most promising 
looking valley of " leads " and " islands," while 
I kept to the higher ridges alone. I saw a number 
of does and fawns, but no stags. The others came 
back late in the afternoon with a beautiful head 
of thirty -four points with both brow antlers well 
developed, one of two stags they had found 
together near a little pond in the valley. 

The next morning we started out to hunt 
towards John's Pond. We had hardly left the 
woods when I saw a stag coming toward us 
through the scattered larches, and we crouched 
down and waited for him to come up within shot. 
The exhilaration of the early morning seemed to 
fill him as he came on, stepping high with his 
head in the air, now and then tossing his antlers 
which gleamed in the sunshine. He was now 
within range and he looked such a thoroughbred 
that I had not the heart to shoot him from my 
ambush, as I stepped out in plain sight of him. 
He stopped and looked at me and then turned 
to run. As he exposed his shoulder I fired and 
he dropped, but was up again in an instant, rush- 
ing across the opening with head down and 



28 Hn tbe MooDs an& on tbe Sbore 

horns thrust forward as if he were charging. The 
second shot was a miss. He was going hard. The 
third shot stopped him and he went down, head 
on, into the lower branches of a black spruce 
from which it took all hands to drag him. The 
antlers were a fine graceful set with thirty-three 
points, high station and good spread, with both 
brow antlers well developed. 

We kept on about six miles north of John's 
Pond, mostly over high peat bog, seeing caribou 
continually. About noon it began to rain, and 
dismal enough it was on those barren, wind- 
swept wastes. 

On the circle back to camp we came upon a 
place where scattered larches were growing over 
a considerable area, and we could see several 
caribou moving in among the trees. To the 
right of us was a little pond at the foot of a ledge 
jutting from the higher level, and as we approached 
it a doe we had started leaped from the shore 
over twenty feet dow^n into the water and swam 
across to the woods on the other side. The caribou 
in the timber were feeding along, headed towards 
us, and we sat down to wait for them, on the 
chance of a good stag coming out. We were well 
to leeward of their course and kept perfectly 



Mitb tbe IRewfounDlauD Stags 29 

still. Eleven of the animals passed us within 
thirty yards. One of them, a stag with about 
twenty points, stopped a few yards away, looked 
us over with no particular interest while he chewed 
on a mouthful of gray moss, and passed on to 
the others. The eleven gathered together in the 
middle of an open barren below us, and as they 
were in our line we thought we would see how 
near we could walk up to them in the open. 
They soon saw us and began to get uneasy. All 
except the stag ranged up together side by side, 
facing us. The stag stood out in front of them, 
now and then lowering his head and threatening 
with his horns. It was like a squad of cavalry 
with the officer in command in front. Some 
signal was apparently given, for at the same 
instant they turned all to the right about and 
trotted away, still in perfect alignment though in 
more open order, the heavier stag bringing up 
the rear. The bog sloped up a little in their 
course, and as the beasts appeared on the skyline 
it suddenly seemed as if an explosion had taken 
place. The air was filled with flying objects and 
the caribou were scattering in all directions. 
What had happened was that the stampeded 
herd had charged into a large flock of 



30 un tbe MooDs anb on tbe Sbore 

ptarmigan, to the great surprise of all con- 
cerned. 

We found a comparatively sheltered place in 
which to boil the kettle in the cleft of a gigantic 
boulder split by some great convulsion of nature, 
and the fire and the hot tea were most grateful, 
for we were wet to the skin. The storm had 
stirred up the geese that had still clung to their 
summer quarters, and flock after flock went by 
us, bound south, several within easy gunshot 
range. It was so tempting that I took a chance 
on the next ones with the rifle and did drop one 
out of three, closely bunched, which gave a quar- 
tering shot about seventy yards away. 

It was nearly dark when we got back to camp, 
which seemed like home after the soaking we had 
had most of the day, but the cook was ready for 
us and his prescriptions and the blazing birch 
logs, cut to extend the whole length of the lean-to, 
soon set the blood going again, and in spite of 
the hard tramping and discomfort and the modest 
success, it has always seemed one of the most 
interesting days we had. We had seen between 
fifty and sixty caribou during the day. 

We started home the next morning, seeing only 
six caribou on the way, and the next day was a 



mith tbe BevvtounMant) Stags 3i 

day off. It was gray and gloomy when we turned 
out, and after breakfast we settled down to piquet 
and pipes in the tent. About eleven o'clock 
George came down from the lookout and reported 
a stag on the bog. He thought it looked like a 
good one. It was Talbot's shot, but we all went 
up to the ledge to see the stalk if we could. The 
stag and a doe with him were far out on the bog, 
but working towards our side. We could see 
the hunters cross the first " lead " and then dis- 
appear into the woods well down to leeward of 
the animals. In a few moments a lynx bounded 
out into the bog below where they had gone in, 
closely followed by a second one, apparently 
startled at the man-scent to the windward of 
them. The caribou had come so far over that 
the trees screened them from us, so after waiting 
some time to hear the shot, — which did not 
come, — we went back to camp, thinking they 
had found the stag to be a small one after all. 
No one heard anything from the hunters until 
about an hour afterwards, when Talbot appeared, 
followed by Stroud, who was carrying the most 
pqrfect head I have ever seen. It had forty-six 
well-marked points with two perfect brow antlers 
closely interlocked down over the nose. The 



32 nn tbe MOO&S anC) on tbe Sbore 

middle beams were unusually broad and well 
pointed and perfectly matched. The back beams 
were rather light, and in spread and weight of 
horn it was a smaller head than the big one, but 
for beauty and perfect symmetry one would hunt 
long to find its equal. It was a good piece of 
luck for an off day, and reconciled us to the idle- 
ness of the next two, for the weather remained 
so unpleasant that we decided to postpone a 
proposed expedition up the valley until it should 
become more promising. As it turned out it 
never came off at all, for Stroud was determined 
on another hunt on our first ground and our time 
was growing short. 

We broke camp and started out to the dories. 
It was down-hill all the way and we were now well 
seasoned, so we made good time and joined our 
returned flour bearers at our first camp early in 
the afternoon. It rained hard during the night 
but cleared up finely in the morning before we 
started for Rocky Ridge. This time we divided 
forces. It was now my shot again, which entitled 
me to Stroud's services and company, and I 
started off with him towards the west along the 
southerly side of the barren, while Talbot and 
George crossed over to take the same direction 



Ximftb tbe IRewtounMan^ Stags 33 

on the northern edge. We saw no caribou for a 
long time until we came up a lead which opened 
into a small barren on a hillside, quite surrounded 
by woods except for the one opening. At the 
upper end of it we could see a stag lying down with 
a doe feeding near by, and even from where we were 
we could see that he had a tremendous head. The 
chances for a successful stalk were good, as a little 
ahead of us an outcrop of ledge swung around 
to the leeward side of the barren, which would 
conceal us from the caribou until within good 
range. Our only fear was that the others might 
unwittingly spoil the shot by firing at some less 
noble game or startle the animals by getting to 
windward of them without knowing their position. 
This lent wings to our feet as we moved forward, 
crouching from bush to boulder to gain the 
sheltering ledge, where we arrived breathless. 
It was only about three hundred yards to the stag 
from the place we had gained, and we peered over 
the rocks at him. He was still lying down and 
the nearer view showed that he was even a more 
splendid creature than we had supposed, as he 
lay there with his white neck gleaming in the 
bright sun and the great antlers, newly cleaned 
on the alders, spreading up like young spruce trees. 



34 ifn tbe XKaoobs an^ on tbc Sbore 

Stroud, to whom caribou were as bam- yard cattle, 
was excited as I had never seen him before. 

" He is a king! My God, if they don't fire! " 
he said. 

" Better try him from here," said I. 

" No. We can get within forty yards of him. 
Come on," said he, and was off, I after him. 

A spur shot out from the main ledge and we 
turned to go around the lower end of it. About 
ten feet below that was a big boulder. We were 
going along on hands and knees when suddenly 
from behind the boulder appeared two other 
crawlers. Talbot and George had seen the 
cariboii from their side of the valley and had come 
across, in as much ignorance of our whereabouts 
as we had been of theirs. 

I am afraid that for the moment we were not 
very glad to see each other. I think I said, 
" Where did you come from? " and that Talbot 
said, " This is very unfortunate," or words to 
that effect. Stroud remained tactfully silent. 
As I have said, it had been our rule to take alter- 
nate shots when we were together, and even under 
that strain on any one's sportsmanship, my 
friend was the first to say that our unexpected 
meeting had turned the good fortune to me. 



TKIlitb tbe IFlewtounManb Stags 35 

We crept along together under the protecting 
ledge to a point which would command the 
animals and moved up over the edge. The 
caribou were entirely unconscious of our presence, 
the stag still lying down and the doe standing 
near him. It was a wonderful picture and my 
first thought was for the camera, but the sun 
was in exactly the wrong place for any hope of 
success, as it generally is on such rare opportu- 
nities. We fired together, Talbot taking the doe at 
Stroud's request, as the men wanted some meat 
for their barrels which they had brought with 
them. She dropped at the shot and lay without 
a movement. For an instant it seemed as if 
the stag had suffered as little. The great head 
fell forward in collapse, but the next moment he 
was on his feet and turning like a flash was off 
at a gallop. The sudden transition was decidedly 
distiirbing, but a second bullet, ranging forward 
from behind the left shoulder, stopped him, 
though he did not go down. I soon came up with 
him, and wounded as he was, the stag turned 
towards me with his great antlers lowered and 
charged four or five steps, when his strength left 
him and he came to his knees. A moment more 
and the white haunches slowly settled down upon 



36 Hn tbe TlClootJS an& on tbe Sbore 

the moss and it was all over. He lay there as 
if he were asleep, with broad muzzle extending 
on the ground, and all four legs gathered under 
him. The head was a splendid one of forty-three 
points, though with but one brow antler, but 
that one a huge affair with thirteen points, and 
a front measurement of fourteen inches. The 
spread was greater than that of any of the heads 
we had, while in height and contour the antlers 
resembled those of the elk more than the typical 
curving caribou horns. Stroud said he had 
never seen a larger caribou. He certainly must 
have weighed six hundred pounds, and the fat 
on his haunches was as thick as the blade of my 
four inch himting-knife was long. 

It turned out that this was the climax of our 
hunting, as it was almost bound to be without 
even more exceptional good fortune than we had 
had. I had the four stags to which I was entitled, 
and though my friend's efforts to get his fourth 
on the next day were without result he came 
very near it. We started on a long stalk of a very 
good stag, which necessitated cutting across a 
wooded island in the barren. The stag was 
travelling westward, and instead of staying where 
we expected to see him w^hen we marched from 



Mitb tbe IRevvfounMant) Stags 37 

the woods, worked up to windward of us after 
we lost sight of him, got our scent and dashed 
off, trotting by Jacob whom we had left behind 
on a hill with the lunch pack, within fifty yards 
of him. This again demonstrated what I have 
always felt to be one of the essentials of success- 
ful stalking, that one should never lose sight of 
one's game for an instant if it can possibly be 
avoided. 

That proved to be our last chance. We had to 
start for the railroad the next morning, and 
though Talbot tramped out the whole way to 
Terra Nova through a fierce northeaster, he did 
not see another head. I came down in one of the 
heavily loaded dories with two of the men, leaving 
the other two to bring in the meat which they 
desired to take home with them. We crossed 
George's Pond easily enough, though it was 
blowing hard and raining, and ran the rapids in 
the connecting stream without mishap, but our 
troubles began at the lake. The wind was blowing 
a gale and the waves were tremendous for such 
a body of water, but by dint of all three rowing 
we made the six miles to the station in a little 
over five hours, rowing all the time except for 
ten minutes or so in the lee of a sheltering point. 



38 In tbe 1RI100&S ant) on tbe Sbore 

Talbot and Stroud arrived before us, well con- 
tent to have been on land on such a day, as they 
had felt sure we would not attempt the lake, and 
there was almost no camp baggage in the dory, 
as we had left nearly everything behind for the 
others to pack out the next day. The hospitable 
people at the railroad station took us in charge, 
and it was not long before the hard work and real 
discomforts of the day had taken on the guise of 
actual pleasures. 

The trip had been a great success, — better 
than our anticipations in every way as to sport, 
guides and even the weather, with seven fine heads 
and a big bear skin to show for it. 

In addition to this we had seen with our own 
eyes certain things, which, with the information 
we had gathered from our men, made it seem 
certain to our minds that the theory of general 
migration north and south for climatic reasons 
was fallacious. It was perfectly true that there 
was a heavy northerly and southerly migration 
in that part of the island near Howley, and 
equally true that there was no sign nor past 
knowledge of such a thing in the district where 
we were, where the general movement of the 
animals at the same time of the year was from 



"CClftb tbe IFlewtounblanb Stags 39 

east to west through the length of the great 
valley on which we had been encamped. The 
question raised by these inconsistent conditions 
was so interesting that after my return I studied 
still further into it with the aid of maps and such 
written observations as I could find, and arrived 
at certain conclusions which it may not be unin- 
teresting for me to include here. 

Before the days of the railroad, hunting parties 
were limited to the country which they could reach 
by some water course if they wished to get into the 
interior. It so happened that the largest river 
on the island, the beautiful Humber, emptying 
into the Bay of Islands on the west course through 
a cliff-walled gorge of wonderful picturesqueness, 
led to most excellent hunting groimds. That is 
the country north of Grand Lake and east of the 
Humber, of which Howley — three tar-papered, 
barrel-chimneyed cabins along the track at the 
time of my visit there — appears as the metrop- 
olis on the railroad map, the best one there is, 
by the way, though it is inaccurate in a good 
many details. 

When the railroad was put through to Howley 
those who had formerly come into the district 
from Bay of Islands by the river arrived at 



40 nn the Wioo^s an& on tbe Sbote 

their old hunting grounds by the train. They 
went no further because there was no need of it. 
They could get all the caribou they wanted there 
without leaving the tracks. Those to whom the 
fame of the district had come came to Howley 
because it was the only place they knew anything 
definite about. They too went no further because 
they found there was no need of it, and camped 
down along the railroad track or went up Sandy 
Lake stream two miles to the north of it. Prob- 
ably nine out of ten men, other than natives, 
who had hunted in Newfoundland up to that time 
had shot their caribou in the Howley country 
between the first of September and the twentieth 
of October, and had never been further east, 
north or south on the island, and, generally speak- 
ing, what I could find about Newfoundland 
caribou turned out to be a narrative of experience 
in the Howley or Humber districts between the 
first of September and the twentieth of October 
under the conditions which prevailed there at 
that time. These conditions are, however, peculiar 
to the time and place. They do not apply to the 
whole country, and deductions which have been 
made from them and applied to the movement of 
the caribou throughout the island are most mis- 
leading. 



Wiitb tbe 1Rewtounblan& Stags 4i 

The country lying north of Red Indian Lake, 
east of Grand Lake and south of the railroad is a 
great expanse of moss- covered barrens extending 
north of the railroad through the Gafftopsail 
region as well. A glance at the map shows White 
Bay cutting deep into the island on the north 
coast, leaving but a short distance between its 
head and the lakes and head waters of the Humber, 
at this point flowing almost due south. The 
country to the north and west of this space is 
thickly wooded and mountainous, with valleys 
leading into it. The interior of the great northern 
peninsula is still shown as entirely unmapped, 
but within a few years I have had the good fortune 
to talk with a gentleman who had crossed from 
the west coast to White Bay and back again, 
continuing north up through the peninsula to 
Belle Isle, all along water ways on which no 
white man had probably ever travelled. He had 
made an excellent map of the country which he 
travelled, showing innumerable lakes and streams, 
one of the lakes estimated to be at least twenty 
miles long. He said that he saw almost no game 
on his journey, which took place during the sum- 
mer months. In September caribou begin to 
appear in the leads in the Howley district, coming 



42 Hn tbe XIG100&S ant) on tbe Sbore 

from the north and headed towards the great 
barrens to the southward, mostly does, fawns and 
yoiing stags at first, singly or in twos and threes. 
As the season goes on they come in larger com- 
panies, twenty or thirty or even more together. 
Some old stags will be with these companies, but 
they generally lag along behind, as they are heavy 
and slow moving. This procession to the south- 
ward keeps on well through October and then 
gradually ceases. This is the time w^hen Howley 
is in its gory glory. The shooters lie on the points 
in the lakes and ponds which interrupt the line 
of march and shoot the caribou as they swim by. 
They patrol Sandy Lake stream in boats and 
shoot them as they cross. Back from the water 
courses they camp on the open leads down which 
the animals travel, and shoot them from the tent 
doors. If several parties are camped on the same 
lead, as is frequently the case, the appearance of 
game is a signal for a free-for-all sprint across the 
bog for the first shot, a social but hardly ideal 
method of hunting such splendid game. In the 
spring the animals leave the barrens and go north 
again to the great peninsula through which they 
disperse into its forests. 

Let us follow them on their return in the fall. 



"mitb tbe lRewtounMan& Stags 43 

At a certain point as they wander southward, the 
caribou coming from the westerly part of the 
peninsula will strike the northern slope of the 
mountains north of Bay of Islands, and it is but 
natural that they should turn along its valley 
towards the east. This brings them into the nar- 
row space which the map shows running due north 
and south between the lakes and the Humber on 
the one side and White Bay on the other. If they 
wander too far to the east the bay turns them 
back. If they strike the lakes or river to the west, 
they follow along their shores instead of swimming 
them, as the water courses have the same direction 
as their own. Thus in a \yay hemmed in, they 
assemble more rapidly. Their line of travel 
becomes more obviously marked, and continues 
through the Howley district just to the south as 
the topographical conditions have directed it, 
until the herds arrive at the great barrens, where 
they scatter about in all directions. It is what 
one sees when a flock of sheep is driven from the 
barn-yard through a lane to a pasture. The 
broad front of the flock converges into the narrow 
passage where the animals pack in four or five 
abreast, keeping the formation thus made for 
some distance after leaving the lane before spread- 
ing out over the field. 



44 In tbc •CG100&S ant) on tbe Sborc 

The great numbers of animals which were seen 
by hunters in this particular district at this period 
doubtless made it seem to them as if all the animals 
on the island must be passing by them, and soon 
it was so written. One writer has said, " Their 
migrations are as regular as the seasons, from 
the south where they pass the winter, to the north- 
western portions of the island where they feed and 
bring forth their young." A few lines further on 
he says that " in the late autumn and early 
winter great numbers of deer — caribou — are 
slain inland from various settlements on the 
southern shore." So they are from settlements 
on the northern shores. Stroud had killed caribou 
in our valley in every month from September to 
April. We could see another great valley running 
east and west beyond our northern ridge where 
he had done the same thing. One of our men told 
us that he had recently gone inland from the shore 
near the Straits of Belle Isle and had come upon 
a barren strewn with innumerable shed antlers. 
As it is well into December before they begin to 
shed, there must have been caribou at that most 
northern end of the island w^ell into the winter, 
long after the finish of the annual passage of the 
animals through the Howley district. 



TIClitb tbe •fflewfounblanb Sta^s 45 

As to the brought forth young, the youngsters 
of the year which we saw had never in the world 
made the journey from the " northwestern por- 
tions of the island " since their several birthdays. 

We also saw quantities of small battered trees 
where stags had been cleaning their horns from 
velvet that year and in past seasons, certain evi- 
dence that they had been spending the summer in 
the vicinity. There w^as no doubt that the caribou 
whose country we had invaded lived there or 
thereabouts the whole year round. Yet we saw a 
general westward line of movement at the same 
time as the southern trend in the Howley district. 
This fact with others satisfied me that the cause 
of the movement of the beasts was not climatic, 
and on my return the courtesy of Chief Moore of 
the United States Weather Bureau furnished me 
with a number of recorded observations which I 
think bear this out. Perhaps the most significant 
is the chart published by the Deutsche Seewarte 
of Hamburg. This gives the average temperatures 
of the north end as compared to those of the shore 
as follows : — 

North End South Shore 

February — 7° C — 2° to — 6° 

May ~f" '° ~f" 5° 

August -f- '3° -j- 16" 

November — 2° 0° to -\- 3° 



46 Hn tbe TKIloobs ant) on tbe Sbore 

The figures for the south shore give the range 
of temperatures along the coast westward from 
Cape Race to Cape Ray. 

The international simultaneous observations 
as summarized in Weather Bureau Bulletin A 
give readings from the charts of average isotherms 
for air temperatures for the years 1878 to 1887, 
which show the average temperature for the year 
to be 36.41° Fah. at the north end of the island 
as compared to 38.33° Fah. to 41.66° Fah. on the 
south coast. 

The comparatively slight variation which these 
figures show would hardly seem to be sufficient 
to cause the migration of creatures so well qualified 
to stand the rigours of a cold climate as are the 
caribou. Let us consider a full year of caribou 
life as nature's records, as w^ell as those of many 
observers, prove it to be. The young caribou is 
bom in May or early June in the woods where the 
doe has betaken herself after the manner of most 
wild creatures when such events are approaching. 
The instincts which have led to banding together 
in the open country in the fall have lost their 
force and the desire to be alone is the ruling 
motive in both sexes. The doe with her fawn has 
all she can attend to and wishes not to be dis- 



TRIlitb tbe IRewfounMan^ Stags 47 

turbed. The stags begin to grow their new antlers 
about this time, and their sore heads and ten- 
der horns make them sulky and unsociable. The 
ardour of the deer flies, which bite both sexes 
ferociously and with entire impartiality, is much 
lessened by the coolness of the woods and their 
concealment, and all these things, together with 
the greatest reason of all, that the trees and 
bushes are producing a fresh and succulent food 
supply, lead the caribou to take to the woods as 
simimer comes on, and there they stay until 
natural conditions are on the verge of change and 
new instincts begin to work within them. 

About the last of August the does find their 
fawns are pretty sturdy youngsters. They can 
feed themselves and run from danger fairly well, 
and the maternal solicitude consequently abates 
considerably. They doubtless think it would be 
pleasant to go out into the open country again 
and see other does and their fawns and things 
generally, most usual desires in the feminine 
which need no further exposition. The young 
stags, whose spiked or pronged horns have grown 
more quickly than the great branches of their 
elders, are filled with vain desires to exhibit them 
to some appreciative doe or to try them on another 



48 Hn tbe TRIloot)s anb on tbe Sbore 

stag, and they too drift out into the barrens, 
joining the does and the fawns which have pre- 
ceded them. By the tenth of September, and 
generahy a few days earher, the elder stags will 
have stripped the last velvet from their antlers 
and polished them on the trees. One can almost 
always tell what the summer environment of a 
stag has been from the colour of his horns. Those 
that are dark coloured have been rubbed on 
spruces or junipers which have exuded pitch 
upon them, upon which the dirt has adhered and 
been rubbed into the horns. The lighter coloured 
antlers have been cleaned on alders or birches and 
have absorbed the more liquid, greenish juices. 
The old stags have had their horns literally on 
their minds all summer, and their purpose dimly 
begins to dawn on them. They are not yet the 
truculent beasts they become a few weeks later, 
for one often sees several old stags together at 
this season, but they are prepared for the coming 
frays and come forth into the open country where 
they join those already assembled, as they have 
picked up others here and there as they have 
wandered about. The old stags are the last to 
put in their appearance, but by the first of October 
practically all the caribou have left the wooded 



XRaitb tbe 1FlewtounMan& Stags 49 

country and are scattered about in the open. The 
breeding season continues through October with 
battles royal between the great stags for 
supremacy over the different herds, until, the 
demands of nature for the continuance of the race 
being fulfilled, the beasts lay down their arms, 
or, to put it less metaphorically, their horns drop 
off, and they settle down to more harmonious 
conditions for the winter on the barrens, for here 
they find the deep gray reindeer moss which makes 
their favourite food supply now that the woods 
have ceased producing. The winter winds blowing 
over the great expanses ordinarily keep the snow 
from covering the moss too deeply for the animals 
to get at it by pawing. They spend the winter 
wandering about looking for thin places to feed 
in, substituting the black moss on the spruces for 
their more usual provender, when some fierce 
storm drives them to take shelter in the woods. 
The snow finally melts away and the trees begin 
to leaf out again in the spring. One beast after 
another yields to its new-born instincts, leaves the 
herd and goes back to some familiar haunt in 
the woodland to begin another cycle in its exist- 
ence. 

I think it is without doubt that these migrations, 



50 Hn tbe 'CC100&S an& on tbc Sbore 

to adopt the phrase, amount to nothing more 
than the assembHng of the caribou on the barren 
grounds which may be nearest their summer 
quarters, whatever the direction of their course 
for arrival there may be, for the ptirpose of being 
near an ample food supply during the winter. The 
spring movement of the animals is but their 
subsequent dispersion to the woods again in the 
furtherance of the demands of their existence. 

These few facts and conclusions may serve to 
let the truth prevail for its own sake, and to 
encourage sportsmen who may be contemplating 
a visit to the island to branch out from the beaten 
track for their game. There are half a dozen 
water ways accessible from the railroad leading 
into the central and southern parts of the island 
which have been practically untouched, and the 
hunting there would be honest stalking instead of 
mere killing in the water and on the leads. 

Since this has been written it has been a pleasure 
to read the most recent book of that Nimrod of 
us all, Mr. Selous. It had not seemed of special 
interest to say that on our return to Terra Nova 
station we saw a canoe crate with his name on it 
lying on the platform and learned that he had gone 
up the Terra Nova River into the country some 



Mitb tbe iRewfounManC) Stags 5i 

miles to the south of us two weeks before. Such 
was the fact and his new book tells of his success- 
ful and interesting experiences most delightfully. 
The important thing is that his observations made 
on this trip and on another to St. George's Lake 
in the southwestern part of the island several 
years later led him to the same conclusions as my 
own in regard to the fallacy of a general northerly 
and southerly migration of the caribou in New- 
foundland. 




^be Blac?i HDooae 

IT was the custom for each to take his 
own guides and hunt separately, making 
trips of two or three days down the 
Nepisiguit, or back from the valley into the hills 
that extended as far as one could see on either 
side of the river, where the best possibilities for 
bears and caribou would be. On the morning 
of the fifteenth of September I had returned to the 
home camp after a fruitless night watch in the 
alders at a bogan down the river for the chance of 
a shot at a moose. The night had been indeed a 
watchful one, for we had apparently encroached 
upon the happy hunting grounds of a pair of 
great-horned owls which flitted like gigantic bats 
from one dead tree to another, with demoniacal 
screams. As the hours passed our eyes would 
close for a moment only to be jerked back to 
wakefulness by the next call from one of the two 
sleepless ones. It was nearly dawn before either 

62 



* / 








" ^\ /. 



MAP OF XEPISIOUIT UIVEH — WESTERN SECTION. 



C\ 



Ube 3BlacIi /iDoose 53 

the guide or I got the semblance of even a nap, 
and that came to a sudden end as we sat up wide 
eyed, a wild shriek ringing in our ears, with rifle 
in hand, thinking that the cat of the mountains 
was upon us, just as one of the owls left its perch 
about six feet over our heads. I had never imder- 
stood before just why the great horned owl was 
called the cat owl, but that night made it clear 
enough. Such a night made a day of rest in camp, 
with perhaps a few casts in the river for the day's 
sport, seem a sufficiently strenuous programme, 
and after breakfast my guide and I were soon 
making up the last night's loss of sleep. 

About noon my friend Lund returned with his 
guides, Sam Gammon and his cousin Len, splendid 
fellows, both of them, from a trip into the hill coun- 
try back of our camp. He reported that there was 
a little pond in there just at the edge of where the 
green woods ended and the open plains began, and 
that they had seen a cow moose feeding on the 
shores of it on each of the three days of their stay. 
Where there are cows the bulls are pretty sure to 
come sooner or later, so they had waited patiently 
but with no result, and had come out again for 
more provisions, intending to return that after- 
noon and watch the pond that evening. They 



54 fn tbe "CdlooDs anb on tbe Sbore 

had done no calling, as it was rather early in the 
season for it to be effective in all probability, 
and with the cow in the neighbourhood it seemed 
wiser in the guides' judgment to rely on her as 
a live decoy rather than do anything that might 
tend to disturb her and frighten her away. 

My friend wanted me to go back with them. I 
told him of the experience of the night before and 
of my own plans for the day, which even after 
the morning's sleep seemed much more attractive 
than the six-mile tramp up over the hills which 
he proposed. He was still hospitably insistent, 
but in spite of the always infectious and never 
flagging enthusiasm of my would-be host, I 
remained firm, and explained to him that I was 
going to a new pond the following day where great 
events were certain to take place. 

" And in addition to that, Joe," I informed him, 
being driven to the crude truth, " having no\v 
travelled something like two hundred miles in four- 
teen days without firing a shot, I see no particular 
purpose in travelling still further merely to see you 
kill your moose." 

" Perhaps there may be tw^o of them," he said. 

" Is that your honest belief? " I asked. 

" You take the shot if there is one." 



Ube Blacft /iDoose 55 

" Not at all," said I. " It's your moose if there 
is one. Go ahead and get him." 

" We'll match for him," he answered. He 
looked aroimd to see if the guides were within 
ear-shot. " Honestly, I wish you would come," 
he said. " I've been up there with the boys 
three days and nights, and they're all right, but 
we're talked out. They are cousins and both 
know the same yarns, and I've told them all I 
know. We sat around the fire last night like 
mummies, and I want somebody to talk to." 

No one could resist such an appeal as that. 

" All right, I'll go," I said. 

" Good! we'll match now," he answered, for 
he, like the great French critic, believes in " action, 
action, toujours action." It so happened that 
this most excellent means of foreordination and 
the administration of justice could not be literally 
carried out on this occasion, for I was the pos- 
sessor of the single coin in camp, a small Canadian 
silver five-cent piece which I carried in the watch 
pocket of my trousers in deference to my one 
superstition that it is for one's welfare that silver 
in one's pocket and the crescent of the new moon 
should be in conjunction, particularly on a 
himting trip. Sam was summoned to put the 



56 Hn tbe TRaoo&s an5 on tbe Sbore 

wheels of fate in motion by tossing the coin, 
" Dates were heads," and if so it fell the shot, if 
any, was to be my friend's. To reverse would 
award the chance to me. The coin spun in the 
air and the face of the good queen looked up at 
us from the moss. Winning is always pleasant 
and a look of satisfaction came over my friend's 
face in spite of his real unselfishness in the whole 
affair. I was satisfied too, for the date is on the 
reverse of the Canadian silver coins, which my 
friend had forgotten for the moment, but his 
always present optimism rose above even this stem 
decree of fortune. 

" Good work, good work," he cried, smiling as 
joyously as if he had been the lucky one, then 
adding, " Perhaps there may be two." 

My own guides were not at all cast down at the 
prospect of a two days' loaf, and we left them 
comfortably smoking their pipes in their lean-to 
soon after lunch. The first part of the way was 
easy going enough, on level ground through 
scattered larches and princess pines. Then came 
a ravine cut by a brook which rose far up in the 
hills. We scrambled down the steep side, lowering 
ourselves by the slender birches to the water's 
edge, where we all followed the maxim of the 



Zbc JSlacft /iDoose 57 

woods to always eat and drink whenever you can, 
as you never know when you will get another 
chance. Across the brook the real climbing began, 
straight up the mountainside through the thick 
timber. Hands were in play as well as feet as we 
pulled ourselves up the steep slope by the trees. 
The afternoon was warm and the blanket roll I 
had improvised for the trip as a substitute for my 
heavier pack began showing a devilish ingenuity 
in swinging into the wrong place at the wrong 
time. As we went higher up the trees grew less 
closely together and the rocks more frequent 
beneath our feet as the soil grew thinner. Here 
and there were open places where small avalanches 
of earth and rocks, dislodged by the frost, had 
fallen from the outcropping ledges above, making 
sharp and uncertain footing for our moccasins. 
From the edge of one of these sunny openings 
two spruce partridges flew up into a tree, from 
which Len quickly brought them fluttering to 
the ground with well-directed stones, while we 
sat and caught our breath and watched him. 
There was no need of a partridge gun with Len 
in camp. David with his sling was no more deadly 
than he, and rarely a day went by that he did not 
bring down some victim of his primitive artillery. 



58 iFn tbe TKHooDs auD on tbe Sbore 

It was not far to the top of the mountain and 
we soon gained it, a desolate boulder-strewn 
knob of weathered granite. We stopped a few 
moments to look about us. Straight before us 
spread the open plain stretching far away to a 
wooded ridge to the north. Nothing but lamb- 
kill and a few blueberry bushes grew there since 
the forest fires had swept through years before 
making the country what it was. A mile or two 
to the left the green woods showed against the 
sky line all along the western boundary of the 
barren land. On the eastern side a high rocky 
ridge arose, making the plain seem more like a 
valley than the high plateau which it really was. 
About a mile away at the foot of the gentle 
northerly slope of our mountain was a line of 
green rtmning into the dull tints of the open 
country, and beyond that a rocky hill on which 
a number of dead trees still stood, gray and fire- 
scarred. 

" The camp is beside the brook down where 
those trees are, and the pond is just beyond that 
hill," said Sam. 

We picked up our packs again and took the 
line through the rustling lamb-kill and over the 
innumerable fire-scarred windfalls lying half- 




cow MOOSE IN POND BACK OF THE ELBOW. 




LOOKOUT AND WESTERN END OK I'OND BACK OK THE ELBOW. 



XTbe JSlacft /iDoose 59 

concealed beneath it. Everywhere were game 
trails trodden deep in the soil by generations of 
moose and caribou. One of these, so clearly 
defined as to be almost a road, led in our direc- 
tion and soon brought us to the camp. 

The lean-to was in a pocket between the hills, 
close to a lively little brook, with plenty. of small 
birch and poplar trees for fire-wood at hand, and 
was altogether most attractive. All it needed was 
a moose head lying somewhere about, and after 
a mouthful to eat and a pipe, for the hour of return 
was uncertain and further smoking taboo, we left 
Len to keep camp and started for the pond. 

We halted at the top of the hill and looked 
down, hoping to see the cow moose at least, but 
she was not there. The wind was blowing gently 
from the west side of the green woods, which was 
as we would have it, so we bore to the eastern 
end of the pond and made our stand in a little 
hollow in the bushes from which we could com- 
mand both shores. There was little to do but 
wait, so we made ourselves as comfortable as we 
could and waited. I know nothing more stimulat- 
ing to the imagination than such a situation as 
that. For one thing the silence of the wilderness 
is something that no one can understand who has 



60 tn tbe Moo^s ant) on tbe Sbore 

not experienced it. Felt it would be a better 
term, for it is almost an active force rather than 
the most passive of conditions. Psychologically 
the premises are something like this. You are 
looking and listening for a moose. An approach- 
ing moose breaks twigs, — not many, be it known, 
— and strikes trees, — not so often as one would 
think. Therefore the breaking of a twig and the 
striking of a tree means an approaching moose. 
In the silence of those places you not only hear the 
breaking of real twigs and the striking of real 
trees, caused by many other things than the 
approaching moose, but you hear the breaking of 
twigs when no twig has been broken and the 
striking of trees when no tree has been struck. 
I remember having been roused to great excite- 
ment by the almost soundless squeaking of my 
companion's leather belt. I remember too having 
grasped my rifle at the grunt of a beaver beneath 
me in his house on which I was sitting, waiting 
for an answer to a call. That evening, as always, 
and as it always may be I trust, we heard the 
breaking of twigs and the striking of trees and the 
things which were not, at each occurrence more 
certain than at the last that the appointed 
moment was at hand. 



Ube Blacft /iDoose 6i 

The sun went down behind our western sky-line 
and in a moment winter was upon us. It grew 
bitter cold and any warming movements were out 
of the question. It grew darker too, but the 
half-moon had risen in the east behind us, casting 
its reflection on the smooth surface of the little 
pond and lighting up even its farther shore where 
the forest met the plain. It grew still colder, 
though it was only about seven o'clock. My 
friend decided that the chance of even one bull 
appearing was slight, to say nothing of two, and 
started off for the warm camp fire, leaving his 
rifle for Sam in case of any emergency. Still we 
waited. What little wind there had been earlier 
in the evening had gone down and there was not 
the rustle of a leaf to be heard. To the left of the 
little pond the fire had thrust into the green woods, 
leaving a good many standing stumps in the sort of 
bay it had formed, which had grown up with small 
birches and poplars. Suddenly we heard a sound 
from that direction as if some old fallen tree had 
been ripped or torn. It certainly had been caused 
by some moving thing, and our ears and eyes were 
on the alert in an instant. Sam thought that it 
was a bear tearing up some old stump for the ants 
concealed beneath it, but a bear would do very 



62 fn tbe 'IKI100&S an5 on tbe Sbote 

well if he came our way. We neither saw nor 
heard anything for quite a while after that, and 
it seemed the more probable that it had been a 
bear starting out on his nocturnal foraging. 

Then our hearts leaped within us, almost into 
our throats, as another sound rang out. It was as 
if something broad and resonant had struck upon 
one of the old dead trees, and we knew of but 
one thing in the woods that answers that descrip- 
tion, the wide palm of the antlers of a bull moose. 
The place from which the sound came was much 
nearer than the source of the other noise, and it 
was almost certain that the animal was coming to 
the pond. It would be impossible to shoot seated 
as I was, and I rose to my knees with rifle in hand, 
straining my eyes into the darkness. I could 
hear Sam's heart beating as he knelt beside me, 
his face set and grim. 

It was impossible to keep such tension long. My 
hands grew terribly cold on the metal of the rifle, 
and it seemed wiser to lay it down again and keep 
my fingers warm and unstiffened in the folds of 
my sweater. Still we knelt side by side like two 
acolytes, and prayerfully too, though I fear our 
prayers were somewhat pagan in quality. How- 
ever that may have been, they were soon answered. 



Ube Blacft /iDoose 63 

Noiselessly and all at once a great black creature 
suddenly appeared at the side of the pond, stand- 
ing in the thick brush that rose breast high about 
him. Not a cracking twig, not a rustling branch 
had warned us of his coming. He must have 
stood there several seconds before the shape of him 
loomed against the darker background and made 
impression on my mind, eagerly as I had watched 
the very spot on which he stood. A sharp intake 
of breath told me that Sam had seen him too. I 
kept my eyes fixed on the great creature and 
groped for my rifle. As I lifted it from the ground 
the bull stepped out from the bushes on to the 
beach of the pond with head erect, keenly on the 
alert. The moonlight outlined him against the 
glistening water and the black background of the 
forest, and made his great upspreading antlers 
gleam like metal. He was headed a little toward 
us and seemed to feel that all was not right up in 
that direction. It was impossible to clear the 
bushes for a shot kneeling, so moving as noiselessly 
as I could I stood up in plain sight of him and fired 
at his shoulder. The echo of the shot resounded 
from the hills, but still he stood there without a 
movement. It took but an instant to throw in 
another shell, but as I did it he made a tremendous 



64 Hn tbe ^KIloo^s auD on tbe Sbore 

leap straight out into the pond. The moonlit 
spray dashed up around him like drops of silver 
as he made a second great leap and rose on his 
legs for a third. In the moment that there was 
for any thought I felt that I must lead him, and 
as he rose for the third leap I aimed at the bull's 
neck and fired, figuring that he would lurch into 
the shot with the shoulder as he came up. Never 
have I seen such a result of a shot. High up- 
reared as he was, he stopped short, staggered for 
an instant, all bathed in the moonlight, and fell 
with a tremendous splash that seemed to send 
the shining drops higher than the dark tree-tops 
behind him. In a moment I had another shell 
in the rifle and was at the edge of the pond. 
There was not a sound except those of the little 
waves the mighty splash had made, and I knew 
that I had killed my first bull moose. 

As I turned to look for Sam I received a terrific 
thump on the chest from that young man, which 
he repeated with his right hand as he held me by 
the shoulder with the other. His face was about 
six inches from mine, but it was another face from 
the strong, virile, good-natured one which I 
knew. Two piercing, gleaming eyes were looking 
into mine from a countenance that was as hard 



Zhc Blacft /IDoose 65 

and lined as if it had undergone the depths of 
human experience. 

" I'm proud, I'm proud," he repeated with 
reiterated thumps. 

Then in a moment his coat was off and his other 
clothing coming. 

" Hold on, Sam," I urged, " not to-night. He'll 
stay there till morning." 

He stopped in his disrobing, and then as if 
coming out of some trance-like state, — 

" I guess he will," he said. 

He did. We went back to camp, clearing the 
hidden windfalls as if they did not exist. As we 
saw the glow of the fire through the trees Sam 
let go three shots in joyous salutation. Our com- 
panions had heard our firing and their shouts of 
congratulation mingled with the echoes of the 
salute. They had waited supper for us, and as 
they had soon decided that we had been success- 
ful after hearing the first two shots, Len had been 
inspired to make a great pile of well-browned 
" flippers " in honour of the occasion. They 
vanished like mist before the sun. Then the pipes 
and the talk that my good friend had yearned for, 
yards of it. First I told how it had all happened 
with amendments by Sam, then Sam related the 



66 Hn tbe MOO&0 auD on tbe Sbore 

great event with additions and explanations from 
me. Then answers to the many questions of our 
companions, and then all of it over again. 

We were eager to get a good look at our game 
and I think we all slept lightly that night. Every 
time I shut my eyes the wonderful pictures that 
I had seen recurred again, and it was far into the 
cold silent night before they left me, sleeping. 
After an early breakfast we started for the pond 
again. From the hilltop we looked down into it 
and for a moment the most awful " gone " feeling 
came over me, for there was apparently not a 
thing in sight, but Len soon discovered a broad 
blade sticking up from the surface of the water 
a little farther out than I had supposed it would 
be, and we knew that all was well. The water 
in which the bull had fallen was about waist deep, 
as we found when we waded out to him to drag 
him ashore, and cold as ice. By dint of much 
twisting and tugging we got the great neck turned 
so that both antlers were clear from the bottom, 
giving the three of us a better hold for towing 
him ashore. It was by no means an easy process. 
All three would lift the head and neck as high 
as we could and pull with all our strength. Each 
effort was good for about six inches headway, as 




HARD PULLING. 





WW^' 




^iyi 


-^.^m^ ^* 


.-^^«^^H 






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^^S^w<^ ^ 


^^1' 


-►T^ ,.\r .r '^•iA 


SS**'. A^ .. J 



RETRIEVKD. 



Ube Blacft /iDoose 67 

the heavy body would lose the slight buoyancy 
we could give it in that short distance, but even- 
tually we accomphshed it, and then with blocks 
and levers improvised from the old dead trees, 
moved the creature well up on to the shore. In 
taking off the neck skin we found the second 
bullet close against the thick hide on the left side 
of the neck, where it had lodged after shattering 
two vertebrae and the spinal cord, and the cause 
of the sudden finish of that great leap was clear 
enough. Just behind the right shoulder was the 
hole made by the first bullet, ranging back 
diagonally through the body, a mortal wound in 
itself. 

We took what meat we could carry with our 
other belongings and started back to camp for 
lunch, and in the afternoon took the homeward 
trail, Len carrying the head skin and Sam packing 
the skull and antlers. We stopped but once on 
that wild descent of the mountainside, and how 
he carried them as he did, steering the broad 
pointed blades between the tree trunks and 
through the brush, I have never been able to 
understand. He insisted that I should come into 
our camp in triumph with the trophy on my 
back, and when within a discreet distance I 



68 irn tbe XlBloot)S an& on tbe Sbore 

shouldered it. It was quite far enough even then, 
and my feat was as sixty yards to Sam's six miles. 

Of course there was great excitement. The 
other member of the party had returned from 
his expedition, and that night the big bull was 
slain again for him. It was a big bull too, the 
largest of a number I have seen dead or alive 
since then, as well as the eye could judge, as it 
was impossible to weigh him. He was a big black 
fellow, with a bell fourteen inches long. The 
antlers were large and heavy, and quite unusual 
in that the palmation began at once, without the 
more frequent brow points separate and distinct 
from the palms, the horns spreading out in two 
great blades rising straight upward and back- 
ward from their bases, making their spread of fifty 
inches slight indication of their actual size and 
symmetry. 

It so happened that seven years after this I 
was in the same country again and had the good 
fortune to see another splendid head, killed only 
a few miles back from the little pond. These 
antlers showed these same marked characteristics, 
and coming from the same district as they did, 
there would seem to be almost no doubt that this 
bull must have been a direct descendant of that 
royal line. 




>' 



"*'t" 



^Hk-* 






HKAl) OK MOOSK Kll.I.KD ON TM T NKI'ISIGUIT IN SEPTEMBER, I906. 




Shore Birt) Sbooting 

I HE boy living on the New England sea- 
board generally makes the pursuit of 
the different varieties of beach or marsh 
birds his first adventure into the world of sport 
when he goes forth with his first, long awaited 
gun. The probabilities are that his shots will be 
few and his game the smaller sandpipers and 
plover, classified as " peep " by the shore gunner 
without further discrimination, but if the boy is 
the right kind of a boy he will learn even from this 
that the smaller the target the closer one must 
hold the gun, and that the little brown and gray 
birds are many and various in kind, with habits 
and characteristics well worthy of his considera- 
tion. Some day in August or September, as he 
tramps along the beach or through the marsh 
after a northeast storm, he will bring his first 
beetle-head or yellow-leg to bag, " potted " 
possibly, that no such marvellous chance may be 

69 



70 nn tbe lKIloot)s ant) on tbe Sbore 

lost, but after a stalk which only his hard ap- 
prenticeship could have taught him. His bird 
book with identified varieties carefully under- 
scored tells him that there are places where such 
splendid birds are plentiful, and sooner or later, 
if he remain keen and the fates be kind, he will 
get to some one of them and see what shore bird 
shooting really is. 

My own experience was very similar to the one 
suggested, which is probably one reason, apart 
from any others, why the sport is still so attractive 
to me after good success with finer game. The 
miles that I tramped as a boy along the coasts of 
Maine and Massachusetts are staggering to the 
mind to-day, but every one of them was on the 
right road, and the little birds that flitted enti- 
cingly before me as I followed on were the first 
guides into the great Out-of- Doors, where the 
happiest days are always waiting. I remember 
perfectly the pride of conquest in my first bag, 
two semi-palmated sand-pipers and a ring-neck, 
slain with a single barrel gun down on the Cape. 
My first "big bird" was a flighting "winter," 
dropped yelping on to the mud flats of Cape 
Porpoise, where soon after I missed the first curlew 
I had ever seen, two " jacks " sitting on the bare 



Sbore 3SirC> Sbootino 71 

sand beach, over which, for some unknown reason, 
they permitted my approach nearer than I have 
ever been able to walk to " jacks " since then. 

My first golden plover was shot on the Charles 
River flats near what would, now be the Cam- 
bridge end of the Harvard bridge, hardly a promis- 
ing hunting ground to-day. 

So it is that the marsh and beach call up 
innumerable reminiscences, clean cut as first 
impressions always remain, each of them a then 
new experience now always to be remembered, 
and it is perhaps this co-mingling of the past with 
the living present which comes in these hunting 
grounds which were first made known to me that 
lends them their peculiar attraction. 

The localities frequented by the shore birds 
are not ordinarily regarded as attractive in them- 
selves. The long white sand beach has a certain 
dreary individuality of its own like a bit of the 
Sahara, chiefly appreciated by the dweller in the 
city who resorts to it and its neighbouring places of 
entertainment on his Sunday holiday, but that is 
not the beach resorted to by the shore birds, for it 
is the mud flat rather than the bathing beach that 
seems good to them, and yet, unpromising as it 
sounds, the mud flat may be very beautiful indeed. 



72 nn tbe XKHoo^s an^ on tbe Sbore 

In the early morning one sees the flats stretching 
away to the distant low water mark, a vast lead- 
coloured desolation. As the dawn approaches 
the lead turns to silver, with iridescent gleams 
appearing here and there on the wet surface as 
the pinkish hues of the morning are reflected from 
it, increasing in frequency and lustre until the 
w^hole expanse is glowing with the sunrise Hke a 
gigantic opal. As the sun sets, its alchemy again 
transmutes their base material with the richer 
tones of the evening, making a picture ever 
changing as the shadows creep slowly onward. 
Such things one may see in the home of the shore 
birds. 

The beauty of the broad green marshes, dotted 
here and there with little ponds and puddles, 
needs no commentator nor defence, so whether 
the shore-bird shooter builds his blind upon 
the flats or on the marsh, or better still at the 
point of contact between the two if circum- 
stances permit, there will be pleasure to his eye 
and soul, whatever the bag may be. There is a 
sense of spaciousness and freedom in such sur- 
roundings too which is grateful. It is nearly all 
sea and sky and solitude, the little damp spot on 
which he sits being all that pertains to earthly 




ON THE FLATS. 




A MARSH STAND. 



Sbore BirO SbootiuG 73 

things, and that same little spot has always 
seemed to me about as near to Nature's lap as 
one could come. 

I may have suggested that the flats and marshes 
were the only haunts of the shore birds, but there 
are exceptions to all rules. In some localities, 
where flats predominate, the birds betake them- 
selves to ledges or neighbouring islands as the 
tide rises, to remain there until the feeding grounds 
are exposed again. In such places the changing 
of the tide is the all important factor in the 
shooting. Indeed, the movement of the birds is 
affected by it to a greater or less extent every- 
where, with the general experience that the better 
shooting will be had on a rising tide, which will 
restrict the feeding grounds and keep the birds 
more on the wing. 

The most remarkable high-tide resort that I 
ever saw, though only the smaller birds came 
there, used to be, and probably still is, a high 
gravelly beach jutting out boot-shaped into 
Machias Bay in Maine. At low tide there are 
hundreds of acres of muddy flats exposed about 
the bay, where great numbers of peep and ring- 
necks are scattered about busily feeding. As the 
tide rises, which it does in those waters to the 



74 Hn tbe Moot)s ant) on tbe Sbore 

height of about twenty feet, flock after flock 
would leave the feeding grounds for the high 
beach. Arrived there they would not run about 
as one sees them on the flats, but would sit 
closely bunched together, headed up wind, gener- 
ally in about the middle of the widest part of the 
beach. As the flocks came in they would light 
down with the others already assembled until the 
multitude made a great brownish patch on the 
lighter coloured gravel. They would be silent and 
motionless, except as a bird too crowded by its 
neighbours might flutter into the air for an 
instant, and but for some such occurrence one 
might have looked at a flock containing hundreds 
of birds without seeing that there w^ere birds 
roosting there at all, so motionless were they, and 
so well did their neutral tints blend with the colours 
of the small pebbles and gravel all about them. 
It is difficult to give an idea of the number of 
birds that were sometimes there, but I remember 
an impression I received one afternoon which may 
be suggestive of it. I was standing in the door 
yard of a farmhouse where I was staying, looking 
off to the w^est across the bay at the beginnings 
of the sunset. It was very still and the tide was 
high. The bird beach lay in the middle distance 



Sbore Birt) Sbootina 75 

about a mile and a half away, the purple hills 
at the head of the bay being perhaps five miles 
beyond the beach. Something distracted my 
attention for a moment and when I looked again 
there was a new feature in the picture. Ascending 
from the beach, with its upper end high over the 
horizon of the hill-tops, rose a dark columnar 
cloud like a tornado or waterspout, waving 
slowly hither and thither from an apparently 
fixed base. In a few moments it slowly lowered 
into itself and the birds were at roost again. It 
certainly took a great many small birds to make 
a sight like that. 

When we went after the birds we would plan 
to arrive at the beach at about three-quarters tide, 
when the greater part of the flock would have 
assembled. After disembarking on the shore, 
keeping heads well down, there would be a pre- 
liminary observation taken to see if the flock 
were within shot. If so we would charge in 
together, and when the cloud of birds arose, shoot 
into it with both barrels. There was little skill 
in it, and, after the marvel of the multitude had 
become familiar, little sport either, but our 
elders at the hotel liked peep pies, and we young- 
sters supplied them bountifully. 



76 Hn tbe Moo^s anO on tbe Sbore 

After such a shot as this, or immediately, in 
case the birds were too far in the middle to be 
reached from the bank, each gunner would take 
position in one of the rough blinds at the three 
comers of the beach, and take toll as the big 
flock swung by, seeking for a new roosting-place. 
The birds woiild not stand this long, and soon the 
beach would be clear of them, most of them going 
to refuge on reefs farther up the bay. Then they 
woiild begin to come back again, now in small 
bunches going like the wind, and this would give 
some real shooting. No decoys were used, so the 
birds were always in full flight when we shot, 
and it was quite surprising at times to see how 
easy it was to miss a wisp of the hard flying little 
fellows. Occasionally they would leave the beach 
after the first few shots and not come back at all. 
Once, while shooting alone and the expected peep 
pie still incomplete, I followed them to the 
ledges. On one of these the birds had packed 
themselves to the water's edge, so closely that it 
was only the telltale flutter of a wing that showed 
that they were there at all. They rose, hovering 
as we sailed by, and with the double shot the pie 
was assured. 

There is a story about an old-time gunner who 



Sbore Biv^ Sbootfng 77 

claimed to have shot ninety-nine peep with one 
discharge of his old queen's arm. A doubting 
listener asked him why he didn't call it a himdred 
while he was about it. 

" Do you think I'd lie about one darned sand 
peep ? ' ' queried the aged one. 

I shall profit by his experience. 

The Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Law- 
rence had become familiar to me through my 
reading as a famous place for shore birds, and 
in 1892 I had the good fortune to join forces with 
my friend Abbott, who had already made two 
trips there and consequently knew the ropes. 
He was a keen sportsman and shore-bird shooting 
was his specialty. His blind was somehow always 
in the right place. His decoys always showed up 
better and more naturally than the other fellow's 
and when the shot came " Mr. Abbott was a 
terrible man in a flock of birds," as a wondering 
boatman once said of him. This last was because 
he had learned to know by the flight of a bird 
whether a shot was the only one he would get, or 
whether he would gain a better one by w^aiting, 
giving a soft call or two, and letting the bird take 
another circle to the decoys. He could tell that 
this straggling flock, following its drooping- 



78 Hn tbe Moo^s anD on tbe Sbore 

winged leaders, would turn and bunch into the 
wind, giving a raking shot if one waited for it, 
while the flock following it would give but a 
chance for a double at best. All these things can 
be learned and my friend had learned them, so , 
that my real introduction to the sport of shore- 
bird shooting over decoys was made under the best 
of auspices. To my satisfaction it developed that 
one hitherto unappreciated accomplishment of 
my own put me more nearly on a par with my 
companion than would otherwise have been 
possible. I could whistle and he could not. He 
was using one of the tin affairs to be bought at 
gun stores, but time and again the natural article 
was the more seductive, and it has been my expe- 
rience that it always is in the long run. 

Our bird shooting ground was a marsh on the 
outer beach across the lagoon from Grindstone 
Island. The marsh was so cut up by broad shallow 
creeks, exposing much muddy surface at low 
water, that it was a favourite feeding ground, 
and the condition of the tide made little difference 
with the shooting. At high tide the birds would 
resort to the little marshy islands or fly across 
from the more solid marshes at either side of us, 
and at low tide betake themselves to the muddy 



Sbore Btr& Sbooting 79 

channels. This was our destination each morning, 
sailing across in a terrible boat, which nearly 
ended our careers on two occasions. I chose a 
little green island for my blind, Abbott building 
his farther in-shore on the solid marsh. This 
difference in location, slight as it might seem, was 
a very material one in its results, for though our 
bags did not differ greatly in numbers, he killed 
the greater number of the more desirable varieties, 
particularly of the golden plover. Where the 
shooting grounds are flats leading off from marsh 
a gunner on the flats will kill species which his 
companion back in the marsh will never see within 
gunshot, except as a straggler may come along, 
while the gunner in the marsh is bagging quite 
different varieties. The beetle-head plover seems 
to resort equally to the marsh and the flats; the 
jack curlew, the grass-bird, and both the yellow- 
legs more generally to the marsh, though some- 
times to the flats ; the golden plover to the marsh, 
or higher land, almost invariably, though Mr. Job 
speaks of seeing them on the flats. On the other 
hand, the turnstone, the " red -breast " and the 
" brown-back " are birds of the beach and flats, 
and the marsh has no charms for them. So it 
happened that of the few golden plover that came 



80 iTn tbe 'CC100&S an& on tbe Sbore 

our way at all, the majority were to Abbott's 
gun. The flocks which had come on the marsh 
were tending far back, almost to the edge of the 
beach grass on the dunes, and his stand caught 
them, only three or four small flocks swinging out 
so far towards the outer edge as to come within 
my zone of action. 

What would have been my best chance, properly 
attended to, was badly managed, and a single 
bird was the only result of it. The shooting had 
not been very stimulating, and about the middle 
of the morning I was lying back in the blind 
reading a book, relying on the call of any approach- 
ing bird to give me time to receive him. I hap- 
pened to glance up over the sea-weed barrier 
towards the decoys and saw what looked to be 
twenty or more black dots bobbing about in 
the air just over them. I reached for my 
gun, and at the movement the flock of golden 
plover that was hovering there, breasts on, 
wheeled before my astonished eyes, and whirled 
down the wind like a flash. Only one straggler 
dropped, but in a few moments I saw them turn in 
to the other stand, where they left about a third 
of their number. They had come in to me low 
down over the marsh and silently, but from the 



Sbore 3Bir& Sbootfno 81 

position they were in when I first saw them, they 
must have offered a wonderful shot a moment 
before, when they came up into the wind to the 
decoys. The plover were only on the beach two 
or three days, and then they departed as suddenly 
as they came. On one of these days I saw an 
unusual thing happen. There were always a 
great many hawks about, of great help too, in 
keeping the birds moving, and I was watching 
one small hawk flying about near my stand when 
of a sudden he poised and pitched at my flock of 
tin decoys. Down he came with outstretched 
talons and struck his intended victim full on its 
painted back. It must have jarred him to the 
foundations. I could hear the scrape of the sharp 
nails on the hollow metal, and looked to see a 
very mad and disappointed hawk fly up into the 
air again after such a fiasco. Not at all. He 
teetered on his strange perch for a moment, gained 
his balance, and after looking at me as if to say, 
" I was going to alight here anyway," began 
preening his feathers as calmly as you please. 
After he had remained long enough to assert his 
unruffled dignity, off he flew, to pursue perhaps 
more timorous but certainly more toothsome 
victims. 



82 Hn tbe llCloobs an& on tbe Sbore 

Our first day on the marsh was the best one we 
had there in point of numbers. That pleasant 
feature of the sport, a varied bag, was present too, 
with ten varieties of the so-called " big birds " 
in our score of forty odd birds to our two gims. 
It was an off year, according to my friend's past 
experience at the islands, and as the marsh grew 
steadily poorer, we went on a two-day expedition 
to Amherst beach, on the other end of Grindstone, 
a vast sandy expanse flooded at high tide up to 
the beach grass, from various channels running 
in from the ocean. It was low tide when we 
arrived on the beach, and though we could see 
bunches of birds far out on the edge of the water, 
looming up like small ostriches in the heat haze 
from the sand, there was nothing to do but build 
our blinds on the ends of two grassy points and 
wait till the tide drove them inshore. Soon it 
began to rise, and so level was the surface of the 
sand that the water was at our stands sooner 
than it seemed possible. We could see the wading 
birds take wing as the water became deeper, 
dropping down again as they could find firmer 
footing, only to be up once more as the tide gained 
on them. The sight of the decoys standing in the 
peaceful shallows by the points could not be 



Sbore 3Bfr& Sboottna 83 

resisted, and soon there began the liveliest bit of 
shooting I remember. It was almost all at single 
birds or pairs, beetle-heads, red breasts, a few 
" winters " and turn-stones. Almost the opening 
of the ball for me was the appearance of a pair 
of godwits, the first I had ever seen, which 
swooped in over the decoys calling loudly. Down 
they came to a most satisfactory double. While 
it lasted the birds came to me thick and fast. 
Abbott w^as equally busy at his point, so that 
when the flight was over we had some fifty birds 
to our two guns. 

That night I remember we spent in a deserted, 
but still well inhabited fishing hut on the beach. 
I was immune, but my friend had a bad time of 
it, so that we were both out by daybreak. I shall 
never forget the sight of the gannets fishing off 
shore from us that morning. There was a heavy 
black cloud lowering in the sky, and against it the 
great birds, soaring in big circles without the 
movement of a wing, gleamed like snow-white 
crosses. Every moment some one of them would 
fold its wings and drop head first into the water, 
coming to the surface to bolt its prey if the dive 
was successful, or flapping upward to the heights 
again in case of failure. The gannets made the 



84 nn tbe 1KI100&5 an& on tbe Sbore 

day one to be remembered, though I have quite 
forgotten what the shooting amounted to, for 
there was little of it. 

Indeed we had no good shooting after this, 
perhaps ten or a dozen birds a day to each gun, 
but no more. Later experience has told me that 
this was partly our own fault, for I have to admit 
that we were rather lazy and were rarely in the 
stands before eight or half-past, whereas under 
ordinary conditions one will see more birds 
between sunrise and nine o'clock than during all 
the rest of the day. The shooting at the Magda- 
lens did not come up to my expectations, par- 
ticularly the golden plover shooting, but that is 
uncertain at best, even there, where one is told 
they used to come in countless thousands, but the 
journey was enjoyable and the accommodations 
under the hospitable roof of Madame Arseneau 
were of the best. 

As I looked back on the trip I could not help 
wondering what our sport might have been if we 
ourselves had been just a little earlier than the 
birds o' mornings, but it was three years after- 
wards before I could test this question, and then 
not at the islands, but on the northern shore of 
New Brunswick. 



Sbore BirC) Sbootina 85 

Another shooter of shore birds who had tried 
the Magdalens with no greater success than my 
own, had sought for more accessible shooting 
grounds as the map might show them, and finding 
certain promising features on a bit of the northern 
coast of New Brunswick took his way there. His 
deductions proved correct, and he and his com- 
panion had some excellent shooting, so good 
indeed that three of us were ready enough to go 
with him on his next visit. When we arrived there, 
three other men we knew were already on the 
ground, and yet so extensive was the shooting area 
and so varied the pursuits that were open to one 
thereabouts, that the number was no detriment 
at all. One of our predecessors devoted himself 
to the excellent fishing in the river and the 
neighbouring brooks, while the rest of us generally 
hunted in couples, two on the beach for the shore 
birds, two in the sink-boxes, and the other two at 
ponds in the so-called " black lands " for ducks. 
We were all stowed away in a capacious farmhouse, 
the homestead of a fine old Scotchman and his 
family, who did everything for us that one could 
ask. The house was on a point just where the 
river emptied into a broad shallow lagoon, across 
which, about four miles away, was the outer 



86 tn tbe Moot)s anO on tbe Sbore 

beach, a narrow strip of dunes at the lower end, 
but widening into extensive marshes on the 
inner side to the north at the upper end of the 
lagoon. At low tide acres and acres of this great 
area were left bare, or so slightly covered that 
the larger birds could wade almost everywhere 
except in the very channels. The rise of the tide 
is not great in St. Lawrence waters, and on our 
shooting grounds we only got the top of it. On 
a strong northwest wind the rise would be hardly 
perceptible. Indeed I have seen the flats in the 
lagoon bare for two days at a time, while a north- 
easter or a southeaster, pushing the water back 
up the bay, would frequently submerge the lower 
levels of the marshes. Three long marshy points 
jutted out into the flats, about half a mile apart, 
and on this visit we did all our shooting from 
blinds built on the ends of these points. The water 
was quite deep at high tide, though not too deep to 
wade about, and this necessitated extra long decoy 
sticks, as the decoys are always set out in water 
if it is a possible thing. The sticks I used were 
made of stout dowels thirty inches long, instead 
of the short useless spindles supplied by the 
makers of decoys. One can always push the stick 
down into the mud as far as desirable, and I have 



Sbore BirD Sbooting 87 

used this length ever since except for setting out 
on a high marsh, where sticks a foot long are long 
enough. 

My first shooting day was on the second of 
September. The better way to reach the shooting 
grounds was thought to be to drive about six 
miles to a little French settlement at the head of 
the bay and go over in a boat from there, a dis- 
tance of about a mile and a half, rather than to 
take the boat at the house landing, for unless the 
wind happened to be fair for sailing the clumsy 
"canoe," it meant long, hard poling through the 
heavy eel grass which grew all over the deeper 
parts of the lagoon, making grand feeding ground 
for the ducks, brant and geese later in the season. 
It was about half -past three in the morning when 
we left the house, for the sun rose about five, and 
we wished to be in our blinds by then certainly. 
It was unusually cold for so early in the season, 
and the aurora was darting about in the northern 
sky in all directions when we started out. It soon 
began to grow lighter, and the east was rosy when 
I landed at the middle one of the three points, 
my friend going to the lower one where he had 
made his biggest bag the year before. I could 
hear yellow-legs calling back on the marsh behind 



88 iFn tbe 1KI100&6 an& on tbe Sbote 

me, and an occasional whistle of a distant beetle- 
head as I piled up the sea- weed for my blind. 
The tide was full flood, and about to turn. The 
wind w^as northwest, straight in my face looking 
directly out into the lagoon, so I stood my decoys 
in deep water a few points to the north, where they 
could be seen clear of the point by birds coming 
from either direction. I had been told that most 
of them would come from the north, and so it 
happened. I was hardly settled in the blind before 
the sun shone full over the low dunes behind me 
and the marsh became alive with birds. Unseen 
curlew began calling to the north and south of me. 
Flocks of sandpipers whirled up out of the grass, 
their white breasts flashing as they turned into 
the sun's rays, dropping down again as suddenly 
as they had appeared. Yellow-legs and beetle- 
heads began passing up and down the back of the 
marsh, alighting at favourite feeding places which 
I was to discover later on, but too far away to 
hear my calls or notice my decoys. I began to 
think I was in the wrong place when the hailing 
signal of a " winter " rang out clear and shrill, 
and I saw four of the birds sailing up to my decoys. 
Two crossed and dropped to my first barrel, and 
a third one to the second shot. The survivor, 



Sbore BirD Sbootina 89 

nothing daunted, hovered in among the decoys, 
dropping its long legs to find footing in the deep 
water, and kept at it so pertinaciously that I was 
reloaded in time to bag him too. Then came a 
pretty flock of red-breasts flying close in along 
the edge of the marsh, so low that the grass 
concealed them until they were almost at the 
decoys. A soft call slowed them up, and as they 
wheeled into the wind with wings set, equally 
satisfactory results ensued. So it went on through 
the morning. Birds were in sight all the time, 
and though of course they did not all come in, 
yet while a bird is on the wing and calling there 
is always hope. The " winters " were more plenty 
than I had ever seen them, and there were six- 
teen of them, fine and plump, in my bag of 
forty-two when the flight stopped. The rest were 
mostly red-breasts, with several beetle-heads, a 
few turn-stones, and by good luck, one golden 
plover, the only one I saw. It was all over by 
about eleven o'clock, so we pulled our decoys and 
splashed over the flats out to the boat, anchored 
nearly half a mile from the point, but barely 
afloat even there, now that the tide had gone out. 
My friend had not done so well as I had, for his 
point was sandy and so less frequented by the 



90 nn tbe TRI100&S an& on tbe Sbore 

yellow-legs, but our joint bag of between seventy 
and eighty big birds was a splendid sight to see, 
and the strength of the early morning theory 
was clearly established. 

The next day I was in my same stand again. 
It was a red-breast day, the yellow-legs being less 
plentiful than the day before, which was perhaps 
not unnatural, in view of the toll I had taken of 
them. Small flocks of red-breasts kept coming in 
from the north, with now and then a beetle-head 
or a " winter " or a bunch of turn-stones to add 
variety. One flock of about twenty came in 
finely, and just as they doubled I gave them both 
barrels, dropping nine among the decoys, the 
survivors wheeling off up the bay. About half 
an hour later I noticed three floating objects 
drifting down on the outgoing tide, and on going 
out to them found two more red-breasts and a 
young beetle-head, which I had not noticed in the 
flock, w^hich had dropped out afterwards. This 
shot made my bag for the day a little bigger than 
the day before, each in its turn the best I had 
ever made, and my new shooting grounds stood 
high in my estimation, as may be imagined. The 
other men were having fair success with the ducks 
and trout, and I joined forces with them for a few 



Sbore Bir^ Sbootina 91 

days before going back to the beach again. Then 
I found that the shooting had fallen off greatly, 
just as I have since found it always does about this 
time, when the flight of the old birds has passed 
on, and the later starting young ones have not 
yet begun their travels, but soon the birds were 
plentiful again, particularly the grass birds and 
the young beetle-heads or " pale-bellies," as tame 
and easy to decoy as their sooty elders are wild 
and suspicious. I did not equal my first two bags 
again, but after the short interval between the 
flights one could always feel certain of a morning's 
sport, with the probability of seeing some unusual 
happening out there among all the birds to lend 
a zest to it which even three o'clock breakfasts 
could not pall. 

The memory of it led me to the beach again the 
year afterwards with my friend Codman. We 
arrived about the twentieth of August in the hope 
of striking the flight of red-breasts which would 
be due some time during the next ten days, if it 
came at all. We lived on the beach in the upper 
story of a deserted lobster factory until it became 
clear that the flight had passed us out to sea, 
with good, though not remarkable, shooting all 
the time, but without the one big day we were 



92 nn tbe TKHoo^s anD on tbe Sbore 

looking for. It was on this trip that we saw the 
flats bare for two whole days, the strong north- 
west wind keeping the tide from rising in the 
lagoon during all that time, and later, when the 
wind had shifted to the northeast, looked out at 
daybreak from our loft to find the marshes covered 
to the beach grass. 

While we were there five other men we knew 
came to the farmhouse, and as five of the seven 
were going home together it was arranged to make 
the last day's shooting an eventful one. During 
the evening before a list was drawn up of all the 
varieties of birds which had come to bag and a 
pool made on each. No one had shot a goose, so 
it was left off the list, but black ducks, teal, 
golden plover, beetle-heads, curlew, and so on 
down to turn-stone, were duly scheduled, the pool 
going to him who should bag the greatest number 
of each kind. Certain individual propositions 
were also made and accepted, so it was with con- 
siderable interest as to what the day might bring 
forth that we went on our several ways beneath 
the stars early the next morning. 

I was in my old stand on the middle point, and 
it soon became evident that I was not destined 
to shine preeminent in the pool taking. Codman 



Sbore Birb Sbooting 93 

on the northerly point was doing quite well, 
apparently with the beetle-heads to judge by the 
whistling from his direction, while the men on 
the southern beach were keeping up a continuous 
bombardment. It was not very exciting at my 
stand, and there seemed little prospect of its 
becoming more so, as the tide had left the flats 
bare far beyond my decoys. Such were the 
conditions when I chanced to raise up in the blind 
and looked behind me. A great bird was flying 
low across the point not two hundred yards away, 
and the first glance showed it was a Canada goose 
and a big one. I dropped into the stand again, 
with one eye strained at the big bird over the top 
of the sea-weed, while I looked in my shell bag 
with the other for some number 4s, the largest 
shot I had. As the bird went on it looked as if 
Codman might get the shot, but suddenly the 
goose set its wings and alighted on the flats about 
midway between us, equally inaccessible to 
either over the bare expanse. There was nothing 
to do but await developments, and by good fortune 
they soon came. A little mackerel gull came 
swooping along, and spying the goose, pitched 
down at it, striking at its head. I could see the 
black neck bend back as the goose dodged the 



94 nn tbe Moobs ant) on tbe Sbore 

onslaught, which was repeated again and again 
by the whirling midget in the air. The goose was 
soon tired of it, and with a honk of protest at 
such behaviour it rose in the air and turned down 
the wind directly towards me. As soon as I saw 
its course was taken, I flattened against the wall 
of the blind and waited. In a few moments there 
he was, about thirty yards to the right, and then 
a grand splash into one of the little pools of the 
marsh echoed the report of the gun. It was a fine 
bird, doubtless one of a flock that had recently 
come into the bay, but why it had left its fellows 
to give me such a chance I do not know, for it 
was in splendid condition and showed no signs of 
any wound except the last fatal ones. 

Late in the evening we were all back at the farm- 
house again, where the birds were arranged on the 
piazza, the noble goose, nine black ducks, a teal, 
and one hundred and six " big birds." After 
dinner, on which the daughters of the house had 
surpassed even themselves, came the awarding of 
the pools. Codman had hopes with his nine beetle- 
heads, but they vanished before the string of 
eighteen which Sturgis brought from the lower 
point, most of them fine old birds with breasts as 
black as coal. Means was an easy winner of the 



Sbore mvb SbootitiG 95 

turn-stone event, and Abbott with the red-breasts, 
these two having been the bombarders I had heard 
on the south beach, but it Httle mattered, for 
though unrewarded except by the knowledge of 
my own superior virtue, the good gray goose 
was mine. 

The visit to the hospitable farmhouse became 
an annual affair after this for several years. The 
early rising necessary to reach the shooting 
grounds from the house, and the dirt and dis- 
comfort of the lobster factory, suggested that a 
comfortable tent on the beach would be the 
solution of the problem. We would pitch our 
tent on our first coming, and leave it and the camp 
equipment when we got ready to go ashore for some 
trout fishing and the greater creature comforts 
of the farmhouse until we should come back again. 
It seemed better too to give the birds an occasional 
rest rather than to keep after them every day, and 
the unwritten rule became two days on and two 
days off during the week, and as we would be the 
only gunners about we could do this and be the 
ones to get the benefit of our temporary for- 
bearance. The visit in the year after the episode 
of the goose was less successful, as the red-breasts, 
which generally made the greater part of the bag, 



96 irn tbe 'C3aioo&s nrib on tbe Sbore 

did not come at all. Only two occurrences stand 
out from the general pleasant memory of the trip. 
I had built a stand back in the marsh at a small 
puddle hole, and was sitting there with little 
doing one bright calm morning when I chanced to 
look out over the swaying grass off to the right. 
There was a long line of large birds, fifty or more 
of them, flying close to the marsh. I did not 
recognize their flight, but as they came nearer I 
saw by their long curved bills that they were 
"jack" curlew. On they came, slowly, in an 
oblique alignment and without calling. It seemed 
best to keep perfectly quiet, as they were still 
coming in my general direction, in the hope that 
they would see the decoys, but as it became 
obvious that this was not to be without further 
effort, I gave two or three soft calls to turn them 
if possible. In an instant they wheeled and came 
into the wind, making a mass of birds that a six 
foot disk would have covered. Then they wheeled 
into line again, then into the mass formation once 
more, a few of them now answering my calls, and 
all the time edging up the wind to the decoys. 
The possibilities were great, for they had un- 
doubtedly seen the decoys, and might come piling 
in at any moment. Unfortunately they did not. 



Sbore Birb Sbooting 97 

Still edging up the wind, they worked above me, 
then turned and came down in a straggling line 
behind the stand, going like bullets. I turned to 
meet them, waited for two to cross for the first 
barrel, and dropped a third with the second, which 
was as good as one could ask under the circum- 
stances, but yet so far from what might have 
been if they had only acted just a little differently. 
So it often is, for there are many forces at work 
to bring about the " psychological moment " 
with a flock of shore birds. 

On another morning I was in my old stand on 
the middle point. It was perhaps ten o'clock, and 
what little movement of the birds there had been 
was apparently over. I had heard one of my com- 
panions firing quite frequently back in the marsh, 
apparently getting good sport, so that my twelve 
birds looked rather small. Soon I heard him 
shouting to me across the marsh, inviting me to 
exchange stands and share in his good luck. I 
declined the kindly suggestion, it being then within 
an hour of taking up the decoys, and we sank into 
our blinds again. In a few moments I saw a bunch 
of birds coming towards me across the water. 
They paid no attention to the decoys, but crossed 
behind me and were out of range for my second 



98 Hn tbe IKHooDs an& on tbe Sbore 

barrel. The one shot that I was able to get in 
added six turn-stones to my bag, however, and 
a few minutes afterwards a still larger flock of 
the same birds, behaving in exactly the same way, 
left twelve of their number on the marsh. Thibe- 
deau, our guide, philosopher, friend, cook and 
boatman, soon waved the signal for lunch at the 
tent, w^here my friend took considerable satis- 
faction in his bag of something over twenty birds, 
one of them a doe-bird, by the way. How I had 
acquired my thirty was a mystery to him until the 
tale of the last three shots had been told. On that 
same visit I had the unusual experience of seeing 
a Wilson's snipe pitch to my decoys, and light 
among them in the mud within a dozen yards of 
my stand. 

The best shooting I ever had with the shore- 
birds was in the following year. Codman was 
ready for another expedition by that time, and 
our friend Hopkins joined us. Again it was about 
the twentieth of August that we left the farmhouse 
for the beach late one Sunday afternoon, for the 
blue laws of the Bluenoses prohibit travelling on 
Sunday before six o'clock except for necessity or 
charity, under neither of which heads could our 
voyage across the lagoon be classed. It was calm 



Sbore Birt) Sbootino 99 

enough when we started, but heavy clouds were 
gathering, making a most gorgeous sunset, and 
several flocks of geese dropping into the ponds 
on the " black lands " gave further evidence of 
a change of weather near at hand. By the time 
we reached the beach it was black enough and a 
light rain was falling, while by the time our tent 
was up and our belongings brought from the boat 
it was raining pitchforks and blowing a hurricane 
from the northeast. We had had our supper, so 
there was no need of a fire, which was fortunate, 
as it would have been impossible to make one on 
the wind-swept beach. We sat in our oilers by 
the dim lantern light in the tent, which dripped 
gently down upon us, making the best of it by 
assuring each other that the storm would certainly 
bring the birds. Finally the tent stopped leaking 
as the fibres swelled, and we turned into our 
blankets in the darkness, while the sea pounded 
on the outer beach and roared at us like Behemoth. 
Along in the middle of the night down came the 
tent, and it was all hands out into the deluge from 
the wreck to make repairs with great sticks of 
driftwood placed against the ridge-pole on the 
leeward side. It was raining hard and blowing 
heavily when we started out after what was by 



100 ifn tbe MooDs an& on tbe Sbore 

courtesy our breakfast. Hopkins was the new 
arrival, and we wished to give him the best chance, 
so my old stand on the middle point was allotted 
to him. Codman had memories of the beetle- 
heads on the lower point where Sturgis had won 
the pool of two years before and chose that 
location, while I decided on a fresh water puddle 
hole back in the marsh where I had made good 
bags at various times. It was a hard tramp 
straight into the wind and beating rain, laden as 
I was with oilers, rubber boots, decoys and shells. 
When I arrived at the old place the puddle had 
disappeared, dried up so completely during the 
summer that even the heavy rain then descending 
had as yet made no depth of water in it, and there 
was nothing to do but to keep on. There was 
another puddle hole still containing a few inches 
of water at the edge of the dunes and the marsh 
a little farther on, which seemed as good a place 
as any, so dropping my impedimenta, I set out my 
decoys and looked about for material for a blind. 
There was nothing anywhere near me that would 
serve the purpose, so I gave it up and sat down 
back to the rain about fifteen yards away from 
the puddle without cover of any kind. I had 
seen no birds while coming up the marsh, but as 



Sbore Bir5 Sbooting loi 

it grew lighter overhead I began to hear faint 
reports from my friends' guns on the points and 
knew that the birds had begun to move. Soon a 
few black specks appeared against the gray sky, 
growing larger as they approached against the 
wind, and in a moment a small bunch of summer 
yellow-legs was over my puddle, scaling and 
pitching down to the decoys. One with each 
barrel was the best I could do, as the strong wind 
prevented them from bunching, and the next 
moment they were gone. Soon two more black 
specks appeared, and a pair of " winters " dropped 
their long yellow legs for alighting. As they came 
to bag in turn, things seemed more promising. All 
that morning there was a continuous flight of 
yellow-legs beating up the marsh from the south. 
The larger flocks passed by overhead, calling 
loudly to the decoys in answer to my whistling, 
but not stopping. The smaller bunches, pairs, 
and single birds, gave almost continuous shooting 
until I was out of shells, and when I went back to 
the tent they were still coming. I had shot badly, 
but the conditions were some excuse for it, en- 
cumbered as I was by my oilskin coat, while the 
heavy wind made the birds shift and veer in their 
flight like twisting snipe. However, I had forty- 



102 Un tbe TKI100&S an5 on tbe Sbore 

six yellow-legs of both varieties and one stray 
turn-stone, when the shells gave out. By this time 
the rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking 
up, which was grateful after the experiences of the 
night. My two friends were at the tent, Codman 
with forty-six red-breasts, with one barrel of his 
gun out of commission since early in the morning, 
and Hopkins, for whom we had intended so well, 
with only six birds, all red-breasts. He reported 
that flock after flock came in from the north, 
going behind him across the point just out of range. 
Codman caught them after that and could prob- 
ably have doubled his bag with the use of both 
barrels. It kept on clearing and all that day the 
birds kept going by, the yellow-legs from the 
south, back of the tent on the marsh, the red- 
breasts from the north, out over the now un- 
covered flats. We could have had good shooting 
all day long if we had been so inclined, but 
enough was enough and we let them go with- 
out further molestation. 

The next morning came in with a most wonder- 
ful sunrise, the remnants of the storm clouds 
making strangely beautiful effects in the eastern 
sky. As there seemed to be few yellow-legs on the 
marsh, I forsook my puddle hole for the northern 




AKTKR THt: Kl.IGHT. 




ON THK BKACH. 



Sborc Bir& Sbooting 103 

point to catch the red-breasts, and our total bag 
was larger than the day before. Codman had 
tinkered his gun into usefulness again, and 
Hopkins found my former praises of the middle 
point fully justified by his experience that day. 
On the upper point I made the best bag yet, fifty- 
six birds of different varieties, the red-breasts 
predominating. All that afternoon again these 
last were feeding on the fiats near our tent in 
hundreds. The next morning there was hardly a 
tithe of them left, but what there were, with the 
other birds, gave us a third excellent morning's 
shooting, and after lunch we started back to the 
house again after an experience I had long waited 
for, — a migration in its full strength of numbers. 
My last visit to the beach was three years ago, 
and a second time it proved an off year until the 
last two days before I returned home. There had 
been no northeast storm to drive the flocks ashore, 
and after the time when the first flight must have 
passed us the warm weather still held on, so that 
there were practically no birds for a number of 
days. A foretaste of winter must have come 
somewhere in the northland, for of a sudden one 
morning the fiats and marshes were musical with 
piping and whistling once more. There were two 



104 iFn tbe Moot>s ant) on tbe Sbore 

guns out the first day of it and three the second, 
with a total of one hundred and sixty-seven birds, 
a good proportion of them fat young " winters " 
and " pale bellies." In my bag on the last day 
was the first doe-bird I had ever killed, dropped 
by a lucky shot just as it flew into the glare of the 
early sun. It was a beautiful bird, so fat that its 
skin could hardly contain it. I brought it home 
with me for the special delectation of a girl who 
had once rashly promised to eat anything I would 
shoot. On a certain afternoon shortly after my 
return I carefully plucked my doe-bird, and that 
night it was done great honour. Later that fall 
Mr. Bangs, the naturalist, told me that this doe- 
bird was the only authenticated specimen killed 
on the Atlantic coast that year, so far as he had 
been able to ascertain. The birds are well-nigh 
extinct to-day, plentiful as they were only a 
comparatively short time ago, in part, possibly, 
through some catastrophe in their northern breed- 
ing groimds, but more certainly owing to their 
continued slaughter during their spring migration 
up the Mississippi valley. 

It was fitting that the shooting of such a rare 
and excellent bird should come as a climax to my 
efforts with the shore-birds, for I have not followed 



Sbore 3Bir& Sbooting 105 

them since that day, but even as the " feet of the 
young men " grow restless for the distant places 
where the Red Gods make their medicine, so do 
mine turn towards the marsh and beach as the 
summer begins to wane. I can see the old stand 
on the middle point, and across the lagoon the 
long low skyline of the woods, beneath which the 
setting sun used to sink so gorgeously. I can hear 
the yellow-legs and the curlew and the beetle- 
heads calling from the marsh back of the white 
tent, and it all seems good. At all events it is 
good to know that they are all there waiting for 
me. 




^be 3Beacb 

I HE gleaming constellations fade away 
Till in the east alone the morning star 
Shines like a beacon on the outer bar, 
And lights its pathway far across the bay. 

Into the sea the curtains of the night 

Roll down, tinged roseate ere they disappear, 

While overhead the opal sky grows clear, 

All radiant with the great sun's dawning light. 

Out of the gloom, as far as eye can reach. 
Blending with sea and sky into the mist, 
Where the wide bay and river keep their tryst, 
Looms the dark shadow of the long low beach. 

All desolate it lies save here and there 
A weather-beaten hut, where in the spring 
The fisher folk their hard won booty bring, 
And make rude shelter till the winds are fair. 

106 



Ube Beacb 107 

A band of horses, scattered lowing herds 
Of cattle turned half wild roam there, alone 
Of all the beasts to claim it for their own 
And hold a tenure in that realm of birds. 



High in the air, arrayed in echelon, 

The honking geese come from their northern isles. 

Across the sky in undulating files 

Long lines of sable cormorants wing on. 

Far in the shallows lonely herons stand, 
Like sentinels on guard upon their posts, 
Croaking hoarse warning to the feathered hosts 
Of coming peril to their peaceful land. 

On the low bars the herring gull's harsh cries 
Make protest while the burgomaster scolds 
For some rare morsel which his subject holds 
As treasure trove, and clamours for the prize. 

Like flakes of foam tossed on a listless wind 
White kitti wakes with gentle call flit by, 
And whirling hordes of restless terns give cry. 
Till with their screams the very skies are dinned. 



108 Hn tbe WooDs ant) on tbe Sbore 

The turn-stone chuckles as he breaks his fast, 
The strident curlew making answer shrill. 
The yelping tatlers, watchful, never still, 
Mock at the whistling plover speeding past. 

All these and more join in the symphony, 
Making the solitude more wild and lone, 
While never ceasing, rolls in imdertone 
The diapason of the mighty sea. 




>UCK and goose shooting over trained 
live decoys, the greater number of them 
free and untrammelled of all restraint, 
is a sport peculiar to Eastern Massachusetts, 
particularly in the ponds of Norfolk, Plymouth 
and Barnstable Counties. Barring one stand near 
Portland, and one on the shores of Quincy Bay 
by salt water, I know of no other places outside 
of this comparatively small district where wild 
fowl are taken in this way, but from Ponkapog, 
hardly a dozen miles from Boston, a skirmish 
line of shooting stands on the shores of the different 
ponds stretches across the path of the southerly 
migration of the birds as far east as Wellfleet far 
out on Cape Cod. The best opportunities usually 
come when the birds have been driven off their 
outside course by the heavy northeasterly storms 
of the fall and early winter, which send them 
inland, heavy winged and astray, in a state of 

109 



no irn tbe Moot)S anb on tbe Sbore 

body and mind readily responsive to the siren 
voices of their kindred which float up to them 
from the quiet pond surrounded by the wind- 
tempering groves which they look down upon. 
This is without doubt the spot they have sought, 
and honking or quacking in grateful salutation, 
they set their tired wings and circle down. The 
sounds of welcome redouble in volume as they 
approach the surface of the pond, and in a moment, 
as if unable longer to await their coming, a flock 
of earlier arrivals in that haven of refuge swings 
out from the shadow of the woods like a com- 
mittee of reception to greet them. The courtesy 
cannot be denied, and the new arrivals whirl to 
the meeting, uttering soft cries as their ranks 
almost join in their flight. On a sandy beach they 
see more of their fellows, splashing and preening 
themselves. Towards these, guided by their new 
friends, they make their way. It is a goodly 
company and the strangers follow, eager to be 
strangers no longer. As they near the beach their 
guides and sponsors set their wings and drop into 
the water with loud cries and much flapping, and 
they follow so good and grateful an example. 
How restful and buoyant the water after the stress 
and buffeting of the wind ! Under it they plunge, 




DICK. ,srA.NU>. 



Mil& ifowl Deco^ina in 

quenching their thirst of travel. Over it they 
disport themselves, rising half out of it for the joy 
of falling upon its soft surface again. Soon they 
notice that their new friends are swimming towards 
the sandy beach, and gathering together they 
paddle after them, calling resonantly. Nearer 
and nearer they swim, toled onward by those 
before them, and then — the story ends, and 
very frequently there is no one of the travellers 
left to tell it. 

As the birds generally come into the pond from 
the eastward, the stand is placed in the woods on 
the easterly shore, if possible, so that the trees 
may serve as a screen from the birds while ap- 
proaching overhead, and to obtain the various 
advantages of the smooth water off the sheltered 
shore. A sandy beach in front of the stand is 
most essential. All the varieties of birds which 
are shot in this way like to come ashore occasion- 
ally, and in addition to its natural attraction, 
the beach is used as the tethering place of the 
*' callers." By feeding the " flyers " on the beach 
during their period of education, and always 
keeping it well strewn with corn, they soon learn 
to regard it as a good place to come back to after 
a flight. The little strip of sand is really hearth 



112 ifn tbe'QCloot)0 an& on tbe Sbore 

and home to the decoys, and they care to wander 
from it much less frequently than one would 
believe when one considers that the ** flyers," 
particularly the geese, are absolutely free to start 
for North Carolina with the next flock of south- 
bound birds the moment their coops are open for 
them. 

Of the goose decoys, only the goslings of the 
year are used as " flyers," and doubtless the calls 
of the old birds tethered on the shore have much 
to do in keeping the youngsters to their allegiance 
to the beach bountiful, for it is not ventured to 
use them the second season, when the parental 
authority has ceased and the migratory instinct 
becomes stronger than mere appetite. 

The duck " flyers " are usually kept with one 
or both wings slightly clipped, not enough to 
prevent all flight, but sufficiently to keep it from 
being stimulating to their imaginations, and those 
which are let at large seem quite satisfied to whirl 
about in the air a few times with much quacking, 
settle in the water and paddle ashore again to 
waddle about on the edge of the beach in splutter- 
ing contentment. Occasionally a duck flyer finds 
his feathers a little longer than his owner sup- 
posed they were, and off he goes, either alone or 




SETTING OUT GOOSE DECOYS. 




DUCK ll.^ERS. 



XPOlilD jfowl Deceiving ii3 

with the survivors of some flock at which he has 
been flown, but generally the call of the trough is 
strong enough to hold him with his fellows on 
the beach. 

The geese are far more interesting than the 
ducks, and many of the older birds develop marked 
individualities of their own in addition to the 
habits common to all of them. There is much more 
variation in the individual marking and con- 
formation too, particularly of head and bill, than 
one would believe at first impression, but the 
keeper of one stand on the Cape claimed to be 
able to pick out any one of the sixty-three geese 
he handled without looking at the punches in 
the webs of its feet, this being the way of mark- 
ing the different families of goslings, and I have 
no doubt with entire truth, as my own unskilled 
eye could soon note identifying marks on the 
different birds in a coop of five. A full-grown 
Canada goose is a powerful bird, hard hitting with 
beak or wings when angry, and generally angry 
or near it, but many of these decoys become 
entirely docile with their handlers, and allow 
themselves to be carried to the tethering place on 
the beach without struggle or protest. Occasion- 
ally a bird will show actual enjoyment in its 



114 Hn the Moot)9 an& on tbe Shove 

human friend's society and conversation, and do 
its utmost to respond in kind. We were looking 
at the birds one morning at this same stand, and 
as we came by the coops much honking resounded 
from one of them farther down the line. 

" Coming, coming, Molly, old girl," said the 
keeper. The sound stopped and in a moment we 
saw Molly, a splendid, beautifully marked goose, 
standing at her gate, thrusting her black head 
backwards and forwards with serpentine grace, 
and hissing softly and amiably with the highest 
Japanese politeness. I instinctively dropped a 
few pieces of com into the coop, but Molly wanted 
no corn. 

" Well, well, Molly, well, well," crooned the 
keeper to her as he stroked the glossy head through 
the bars, and it was very evident that that was 
what Molly wanted. 

The goose " callers " are either wild birds which 
have beeQ captured and domesticated, or birds 
more than a year old bom in captivity from 
wild stock. The " flyers " are bom in captivity 
of course, and the keeping up of the supply of 
goose " flyers," the most picturesque element in 
the whole sport to my mind, is the greatest diffi- 
culty connected with it. Apart from the raids of 



rats and skunks upon the young birds, the reasons 
for this are two, — the apparent weakening of 
the " Life Force," in Shavian terms, in the birds 
bom in captivity, so that mating is the exception 
rather than the rule among them, possibly because 
the field of natural selection is limited to the few 
rather than to the many, and the fact that both 
goose and gander once mated are faithful in 
bereavement for ever after. This is doubtless 
highly creditable to the birds, though it has been 
suggested that this was the true reason of their 
being called geese, but it is equally inconvenient 
to their owners. The mother goose who has seen 
her duty and done it for the last five seasons 
becomes a widow, and the bag of geese at her 
owner's stand that fall is little to boast of. A 
young unmated gander may be wing tipped and 
find his affinity in the group of hitherto unwooed 
maidens in the coops, but that is about the only 
chance of legitimate succession, and it may well 
be understood that the longevity of the goose is 
a matter of congratulation to the owners of a 
happy pair and that the best is none too good for 
them. 

The stand at which my friend " Molly " spends 
her autumns may be taken as typical of them all 



116 irn tbe TRI100&S an& on tbe Sbore 

in general arrangement, though it excels most of 
those I have visited in comfort and convenience. 
It is situated on the easterly shore of one of the 
larger ponds on Cape Cod, tucked away in a thickly 
growing grove of scrub oak and pine which per- 
fectly conceals the low roof of the camp when all 
the other trees are bare. On the left, as you 
approach on the private road leading from the 
highway is a refrigerator outhouse for the birds 
that may be killed, burrowed into the side of a 
little hill on top of which, and facing towards the 
pond, are the coops for the " flyer " geese, four 
sets of them at a recent visit. It is quite an 
advantage to have the flyers so situated on a 
height, as they are certain to take flight from it 
when liberated, instead of solemnly marching in 
single file to the water's edge, as has been known 
to happen with them in a critical moment when 
they have been loosed from coops on the level of 
the shore. To the sliding door of each coop a 
long rope is attached, each identified by a wooden 
tag at the end, all lying at hand on the bank 
behind the brush-covered palisade erected just 
above the high water mark on the sandy beach. 
A sloping passage covered with branches leads 
down from the door of the camp to the space 



Mtlt) fowl Beco^ina 117 

behind the ambush which is built about shoulder 
high, pierced with loopholes at intervals, and 
thickly thatched with cedar boughs. On the 
bank above, a thick planting of evergreens con- 
ceals the shoreward side of the little building 
beneath the trees. At one end of the palisaded 
water battery is a little shed in which the loaded 
guns and a supply of spare ammunition are kept. 
End to end along the blind are long wooden boxes. 
As you wonder what they may contain you may 
hear a muffled " quack " from one of them. Well 
you may, for they are full of ducks, ducks and 
still more ducks, sitting in these dreary cages 
until they shall be needed to attract some passing 
flock. Then off come the covers, and each man 
seizes duck after duck, throwing it high into the 
air. The birds quickly get their poise and whirl 
out over the water, quacking loudly. If they see 
the newcomers, as they generally do, they fly 
towards them as far as their clipped wings will 
carry them, and then " plop " comfortably into 
the pond in a manner frequently most enticing to 
the newcomers, which also alight to follow along 
their wake, back towards the corn-strewn beach. 
The actual shooting is the poorest part of it all, 
as the first shot is taken sitting, with the guns 



118 In tbe TKHoo^s ant> on tbe Sbore 

through the port-holes, at a given signal when 
the birds are bunched the closest, the man at 
the right taking the birds at his end, and so on 
across the flock. If any escape the initial bom- 
bardment the survivors are saluted over the top 
of the blind, making the second-barrel shot almost 
as difficult as the first was unrighteously simple. 
If the birds jump high and straight, as the black 
duck generally will, it is well enough, but a low 
flying bird has more than an even chance, as the 
height of the palisade makes over-shooting almost 
a certainty, except to the " old timers," and even 
they have their regrets occasionally. 

These same " old timers " are only second to 
the " flyers " in adding interest to the sport. The 
hired keeper of the stand is always high up in the 
order. He has lived with the decoys year in and 
year out until he literally knows their language. 
He is at the stand day and night throughout the 
season, instead of merely the few days snatched 
from the office which come to most of us. Strange 
and interesting things are bound to happen to him 
in his watching, and his quaint relation of them 
helps mightily in the hours of waiting in the 
little camp, for sometimes the skies are unduly 
bright and the flocks few and far between. Molly's 



TKHtl^ 3fowl 2)ecoi?ing ii9 

friend related one instance of the unexpected 
that happened at his stand one morning. The 
" callers " on the beach were honking lustily, and 
the keeper and his companion hurried down the 
covered way into the blind to see a goodly 
" g^ggls " of gray geese lowering down into the 
pond. A pull at one of the long ropes let loose 
a set of flyers to which the strangers turned. A 
second set swung out, bringing the two other 
flocks nearer still. The chorus on the beach 
redoubled its efforts, and after a few gliding circles 
all the birds dropped into the water. On they 
came until the decoys were almost at the beach, 
and the wild fowl so nearly within shot that guns 
were cocked and final arrangements made to 
greet the twenty-eight splendid fowl swimming 
in close phalanx towards the shore. The next 
moment the air was full of geese as they scattered 
in all directions, while a great bald eagle swooped 
down upon them with outstretched talons from 
behind the trees that had screened his coming. 
The flyers came ashore pell-mell, while a shot from 
the blind warned the great bird to keep his dis- 
tance. Such a sight would have been worth 
seeing and a deal of recompense for the loss of 
such a shot. 



120 iTn tbe IKIloobs ant) on tbe Sbore 

At another stand the " callers " announced some 
new arrivals in the pond late one dark November 
night, and the three men who happened to be in 
the camp jumped from their warm bunks, seized 
their gtins and hurried out into the night, clad 
in whatever garments came first to hand. It was 
inky black, but out in the darkness they could 
hear the beating of swift wings and then a suc- 
cession of heavy splashes close inshore. The 
decoys on the beach were calling continuously, 
and the answering calls came from but a few 
yards beyond them. It was impossible to see a 
thing, but the men waited, shivering, hoping that 
the strange birds would range off to one side, 
with the possibility of a chance shot at the sound 
in the darkness. Nothing of the kind occurred, 
as strangers and decoys had apparently fore- 
gathered permanently, and back to bed they 
went, within a hundred feet of their unseen prey. 
Geese and men slept side by side, but the gunners 
were up again before daybreak, peering through 
the port-holes to see what they could see. There 
on the beach were the geese, tame and wild, 
where they had been all night, some standing on 
one leg, heads under wings, some breasted in the 
sand with heads thrown back, while two or three 




THK CAI.l-ERS. 




AFTr:K A SUCCESSFUL SHOT. 



"CCIUO ifowl Beco^tng 121 

did sentinel duty at the water's edge. As the 
day dawned they roused themselves, with low 
calls and honkings. Gradually the wild birds 
gathered together, apparently regarding their 
tethered bed-fellows with some suspicion, and 
into the water they glided. As they pressed 
together from the shore with heads held high, 
the long delayed shots resounded, and as one 
bird the flock slept again. 

As a general thing the stands are not kept in 
commission in the spring, but on one occasion two 
" city fellers " were staying with an old market 
gunner at his stand in early April during the 
northern flight. When they arrived there they 
found conditions most unfavourable. The weather 
was fair and warm, but not warm enough to have 
entirely melted the ice from the pond, a belt of it 
still stretching out over a gunshot from the shore 
directly in front of the blind. It seemed hopeless 
enough, but they were there and a favourable 
wind might blow up for the better, and a few 
days in old clothes near a gun are good for the 
spring fever in any year. A flock of ducks came 
into the pond in the evening, but the quack- 
ing flyers bumping down upon the ice were no 
attraction to them, and they dropped into the 



122 nn tbe WOO&S an& on tbe Sbore 

open water, swimming along the edge of the ice 
belt, giving a sample of what might be expected. 
The next day was bright and beautiful, but not a 
good day for ducks, much less for geese. But all 
signs fail at times. About the middle of the 
morning one of the visitors happened to look up, 
by a happy chance, and saw a V of thirteen geese 
going north high over head. They were flying in 
silence, and neither the " callers " on the beach 
nor the birds in the coops had noticed them. They 
too had been calling little during the morning, 
and were quite silent when the wild birds came 
along. 

" War, that's too bad. They don't hear us," 
drawled the old chap, as he watched the steady 
flight of the birds. " But they wouldn't 'a' come 
over the ice anyway," he philosophized. 

" They'll hear us all right," answered one of 
his visitors. 

He ran back from the blind to the little hill 
where the " flyer " coops were stationed, and in 
a moment honking loud and long filled the air, 
interspersed with insistent demands to " holler, 
confound you, holler." The callers on the beach 
took up the cry until the wooded banks of the 
pond reechoed. Presently the birds in the air 



Mil& 3fowl Decoding 123 

changed their formation a little, slowing their 
flight and closing up the convergent ranks. An 
answering call came down the wind and in a 
moment the flock turned and headed back towards 
the pond. On came the birds, honking vigorously 
to the callers at the stand. Soon they were over 
the pond, well down, even circling over the belt 
of glistening ice, which ought to have melted then 
and there at the things which were said of it. 
Then with many strange gyrations down they 
dropped into the open water. As the birds lit 
the geese on the shore stopped calling and the 
new birds were soon busy with their ablutions or 
at play, skittering along the surface like half- 
fledged flappers. The men in the stand watched 
them awhile in silence. The decoys on the beach 
and those in the coops were silent too. 

" I guess it's all over, even the shoutin', " said 
the veteran. 

" Not yet," said his still hopeful guest. Leaving 
his gun at his port hole he went back to the coops 
a second time, and again loud honking echoed 
from the wooded hillock to be taken up by the 
tethered birds. At the sounds the swimming 
birds gathered together and in a moment were on 
the wing flying straight across the ice towards the 



124 iFn tbe Moobs an& on tbe Sbore 

stand. The recent disturber of the peace was 
back again, gun in hand, in time to see the birds 
settle gently upon the ice. 

" We've got to do this quick," he said. 
" Ready." 

The shots rang out, and but three birds of the 
thirteen rose from the ice, one of them only to fall 
again in the open water beyond its edge. 

The veteran looked over the top of the blind 
at the fallen birds. 

" I've gunned this pond for forty year," said 
he, in a half -dazed way, " and I never see geese 
fly over the ice before." 

That was the burden of his song during the rest 
of the stay there, in any period of silence, at any 
hour of the day. If he said it once, he said it a 
hundred times, and I have no doubt the memory 
is a solace to his leisure moments even to this 
day. 

It was an unusual occurrence, for wild fowl do 
generally avoid flying over a floe or belt of ice, 
and though I have seen birds crawl up from the 
water on to it, I have never known them to pitch 
upon ice from flight except on this occasion. 

The actual amount of shooting done during the 
season at any one of the stands is not to be com- 



'CClil& fowl Decoding 125 

pared with the possibilities of the western and 
southern grounds, and the modest total of the 
best of them would look small on the records of 
one of the Currituck clubs. Neither does the 
potting of the swimming fowl give one the feeling 
of elation and satisfaction that comes with the 
stopping of a hard -flying, crossing pair, crumpled 
up in full flight, and the sound of their " splash, 
splash " as they strike the water, but the part 
played by the flying decoys lends a living, dramatic 
interest to every chance which does come at the 
stands that prevents the possibility of monotony or 
surfeit in the sport. Any one who has ever tossed 
a " flyer " is certain to have memories of incidents 
doubtless more unusual and interesting than 
those I have sketched here, and my own experi- 
ence has been that few things connected with 
sport remain in my mind's eye more vividly than 
certain tableaux of flocks of loudly calling birds 
circling over the calm surface of a wooded pond, 
now joining their ranks together, now whirling 
apart again in swift evolutions, then setting their 
wings and alighting. 

My first stay at a stand offered certain typical 
experiences. A friend was making his head- 
quarters during the season at his stand on a pond 



126 ifn tbe moo^s an& on tbe Sbore 

near Boston, coming into the city in the morning 
with the other suburbanites, — unless there were 
birds in the pond, — and returning to the simple 
life in time for what the late afternoon might 
bring forth. One day in November I went out 
with him. As we came down through the woods 
from the main road we soon heard the geese calling 
on the beach, their honking sounding above the 
monotone of the never-ceasing quacking of the 
ducks. The interest began at once, for there 
might be birds swimming in to the decoys even 
then. There was no such luck as that awaiting 
us however, when we went out through the neat, 
comfortable little house into the blind, and the 
keeper reported that no birds had come into the 
pond during the day. This was not unexpected, 
as the weather was unseasonably warm and fair, 
with hardly enough breeze to ripple the surface of 
the water as it reflected the rays of the afternoon 
sun lowering over the western hills across the 
pond. The tall chimney of a power house in the 
near-by village where we had left the train sent 
its thin column of smoke straight up into the air, 
lending a dissonant tone to the otherwise un- 
marred picturesqueness of the place. It was so 
calm that we could plainly hear the calling of 



MilD jfowl Deco^in^ 127 

the decoys at the other stand over on the northerly 
shore of the pond. An occasional whistle of a 
passing locomotive came to us from the direction 
of the village, while the lowing of cattle and the 
occasional barking of a dog told of farms near 
by beyond the trees. The conditions w^ere about 
as unpromising for a flight of wild fowl as could 
be imagined, but hope springs eternal and we 
were on the watch again after our early supper. 
The sun had set by this time and the shadows 
across the pond were encroaching more and more 
upon the coppery surface when a flock of black 
ducks swooped down over the trees far to the left 
of us. Some of the decoys soon saw them and 
quacked loudly. The birds at the other stand 
across the pond saw them too and lifted up their 
voices. The neighbouring stand was directly on 
the line of flight of the wild birds, and though 
they swung in towards us at the calls of our 
decoys, they still kept their course. The moment 
we sighted them the keeper had the cover off one 
of the long duck boxes and a flapping mallard in his 
grasp. Up he went into the air, out over the beach 
followed by duck after duck as we got our hands 
in. The air was full of whirling ducks and the 
water boiled with their splashing. The geese on 



128 iTn tbe 'JKI100&S an& on tbe Sbore 

the beach and in the coops joined in the chorus, 
though it was no affair of theirs, and as a gratifying 
result of our Httle pandemonium the wild birds 
turned suddenly and circled directly towards us. 
It seemed wisest to let well enough alone. We 
stopped work with the flyers, for there were 
birds enough in the water to bring the visitors 
down with them if so the fates decreed. On came 
the flying fowl, greeted by excited cries of the 
swimmers beneath them. They swept past the 
decoys, then turned again and came skimming 
back, stiff winged, showing every evidence of 
having arrived at a final decision to alight then 
and there. It seemed so much a fact accomplished 
that we parcelled out the flock among us for the 
expected shot, while our feathered fellow-con- 
spirators ceased their quacking and awaited the 
newcomers with heads erect. But ducks like 
chickens, should not be counted before the 
appointed time. At this tense expectant moment 
a loud burst of frantic quacking came from the 
decoys across the pond, and in an instant the wild 
birds whirled into the air and turned in the direc- 
tion from which the sounds had come. Again we 
filled the air with a volley of flyers, and again 
our ducks and geese lifted their voices seductively 



TIBltl^ 3fowI Decoding 129 

and reproachfully, but it was all in vain, and 
" our " nine black ducks disappeared into the 
black shadows across the pond. The calling at 
the other stand continued for a few moments and 
then stopped, just as our birds had ceased their 
cries when the flock had come in to them. Then 
we saw four quick flashes from the shore across 
and knew that our marketing rivals had wiped our 
eyes. The echoes of the shots had hardly died 
away when there was a whistling of wings and out 
of the darkness came a single black duck, the sole 
survivor of the flock, so suddenly that our decoys 
gave short warning of its coming. Down it 
splashed, as if to sanctuary, within easy shot in 
the light streak of water which the shadows still 
left us, and the next moment had joined its fellows, 
flighting to the happy hunting grounds. 

That was all that night, and after driving in the 
flyers we turned in, the vigilant geese honking 
an " all's well " from time to time as we dropped 
off to sleep. 

It was a gray morning, quite calm, with the 
light wind shifted a little to the eastward, showing 
a storm coming but not yet arrived. The only 
game in sight was a solitary widgeon which we 
spied swimming about on the pond at our first 



130 iTn tbe lKlloo&a anD on tbe Sbore 

view, which duly came to bag after our early- 
breakfast . As the morning hours passed our 
hopes departed with them, as no birds came over, 
and it was finally decided that it was a good 
opportunity to let out the goose flyers for a 
little exercise, as they had been flown but little 
in the past few days. The three coops were opened 
one after the other and the big gray birds marched 
forth in single file, honking loudly, taking wing at 
the water's edge. Each flock flew out over the 
pond, flying low in wide circles, and finally dropped 
in a little cove about one hundred yards away 
where they bathed and disported themselves, 
enjoying their temporary freedom to the utmost. 
It was a beautiful picture that they made there, 
but we were shown an even finer one a little later, 
when the whole flock rose in the air and flew,. by 
within ten yards of us, to light again no great 
distance below the stand. Things were in this 
condition when the old gander on the beach lifted 
up his voice in raucous hailing. We looked up 
instinctively and there high above us were eight 
wild geese flying to the south. The other geese 
took up the cry and called wildly, the ducks, 
excited and full of good intentions, chiming in 
with futile quacking. The decoys at the other 



TKHil^ fowl WccovirxQ 131 

stand, joined in until the noise might well have 
reached the heavens. It certainly reached the 
geese flying not far below them, for they turned 
and lowered towards the pond. Down, down they 
came, and there we stood with not a flyer in 
the coops to send forth to guide them to us. Our 
rivals of the night before were not caught napping. 
At what seemed the exact psychological moment, 
as the wild birds were on the point of lighting, 
out from the shore came the vanguard of their 
flyers with joyous cries. The new birds lifted 
again to meet them and their ranks intermingled 
as they whirled shoreward s. It was wonderful to 
see. Then came the second set of flyers from 
the shore. The first flown birds responded the 
more quickly to their calls, and the joined forces 
separated again into wild and tame, and lit after 
a few whirling evolutions. It was so calm that we 
could see the birds swim towards the shore in two 
flocks, the tame birds in the lead. Just as two or 
three of the decoys rose up onto the beach we saw 
two puffs of smoke quickly followed by two more, 
while three geese out of the eight rose from the 
water in rapid flight. They lit again farther down 
the pond, but only stayed there a short time. One 
of them rose, the other two quickly joining it, and 



132 nn tbe MooDs an& on tbe Sbore 

in a few moments the trio, flying in a little V, were 
far on their southward course again. In a minute 
more they would be out of sight, when of a sudden 
they turned and headed back again. Over the 
pond they came, high in the air to be sure, but 
coming, and directly towards us, as we crouched 
close behind the palisade. They paid no attention 
at all to the decoys at the other stand, though they 
were calling loudly, but passed those Pharisees 
by on the other side. Fortunately our flyers 
had all come in and gathered on the beach, and 
these had attracted their attention. They called 
lustily and the birds overhead answered them as 
they went over the stand directly above our heads, 
while we lay flat on the ground each with one eye 
squinting towards the heavens. In a few moments 
they were back again and out over the pond where 
they lowered, lowered, lowered and finally lit, 
welcomed by our birds on the beach. After a 
short survey they started swimming inshore, and 
as the word was given there was a goose for each 
of us stretched on the water. It was sheer good 
luck rather than good management from beginning 
to end, for it was no skill or effort of ours which 
caused the geese to turn back to us, but it was 
none the less welcome. To be sure the other 



Milt> ifowl H)ecosing 133 

stand had beaten us again, but as I look back 
at the picture of our rivals' flyers going out to 
meet the wild birds, I find it very easy to forgive 
them for stealing the morning's cream that day. 




Zvoo Bears 

!HE sound of the word " bear " at once 
suggests to the lay mind great size, 
shagginess and ferocity, and those fatal 
embraces with which it is generally understood 
the creature invariably overwhelms its enemies. 
Doubtless a great deal of this is due to the fact 
that the bear is one of the first animals of one's 
acquaintance in early childhood, almost inva- 
riably in connection with some most tragic occur- 
rence. The literature and legends of childhood 
are full of bears, a benevolent bear appearing 
only now and then as a great exception to the 
established rule that bears are the special enemies 
of bad little boys and girls, always on the watch 
to catch them and eat them up in punishment 
for their misdeeds. 

The fearsome glamour which surrounds the 
bear in most minds is by no means unnatural in 
view of such training, and even after a closer 

134 



XTwo Bears 135 

acquaintance with him it still persists, at least 
to the extent of making the pursuit and capture 
of a bear a most desirable and gratifying per- 
formance. Be it understood that there are bears 
and bears. The white Polar bear of the Arctic 
seas, the huge Kadiak on his island in the Pacific, 
his massive brown relative of the Alaska moim- 
tains, the grisly denizens of the Rockies, — they 
are all honourable bears, and from the tales that 
one hears of them from the mighty hunters of 
those lands, they succeed well in fulfilling the 
most exacting demands of what a bear should 
be. 

Now that the panther and the wolf have been 
so nearly exterminated in the eastern hunting 
grounds, the only large carnivorous animal that 
is left is the black bear. Neither in size nor in 
warlike spirit is he the equal of the other varieties 
of his kind, though it would appear from more 
recent narratives that the difference between 
them is growing less in this respect, as man has 
brought the nameless fear that comes with his 
encroachment deeper and deeper into their 
strongholds. A full-grown black bear in proper 
pelage makes a splendid trophy of a well-con- 
ducted stalk or some exceptionally lucky chance 



136 iTn tbe Moot)s ant) on tbe Sbore 

shot, and in the eastern country, where dogs are 
rarely if ever used in the pursuit, it is only in one 
or the other of these ways that such a trophy 
is honourably obtained, by which I mean with 
the rifle, not the trap. The lucky chances come 
to but few, for there is no creature in the woods 
with senses more alert, scent, sight and hearing, 
and it is rare that one of these does not warn him 
of your approach before your paths can cross. 
At some rare moment a bear may be taken at his 
disadvantage and a shot obtained, as was the 
experience of a friend who came upon three bears 
swimming across the river he was ascending in 
a canoe. He waited until each gained the shore 
and dropped them one after the other. Another 
occurrence which was related to me w^as of a 
hunter returning with his guide to their camp 
to find three bears busily engaged in pillaging the 
provision tent. The guide was in the lead and 
first discovered the animals, one with his black 
fur whitened with the meal and flour from the 
tattered sacks, so busily engaged in their work 
of destruction that they paid absolutely no atten- 
tion to his shout w4th which he instinctively 
first thought to drive them away. The hunter 
killed two of the marauders, the third one escaping 



Zwo Bears 137 

into the woods. In my own experience I had seen 
bear signs fresh and frequent on almost every 
htmting trip I had taken before the one on which 
my own first chance occurred, on a barren bog 
in Newfoundland, but at no time had the condi- 
tions been sufficiently favourable to allow the 
signs to be followed up and the shot obtained, 
however fresh the markings of the broad paws in 
the soft ground or however near the breaking of 
the underbrush. 

On the morning of the 15 th of September in 
1901 we left camp to go over across the valley and 
pick up certain caribou skins which we had left 
drying on a convenient rocky ledge. We found 
them in good condition and sent the cook back 
to camp with them, keeping Stroud and one of the 
other guides with us. The carcass of one of the 
caribou had been left near at hand and we hunted 
it up to see if by any chance a bear had come to it. 
The whole thing was gone. A well-marked trail 
in the grass led us to some bare ground on an 
outcrop of ledge where we lost it, but a puff of 
wind laden with a most terrific odour soon set us 
right, and we found what was left of the caribou 
in some bushes at the edge of the bog. All the 
signs showed that a good able-bodied bear had 



138 Hn tbe MOO&S ant) on tbe Sbore 

brought it there within the last twenty-four hours, 
as the tracks had been made since a rain-storm 
which had stopped about that time before. Ap- 
parently he had not yet begun to feed on it, 
which meant that he would be back. We decided 
that we would be back too, and after a run up the 
valley took up our watch on a neighbouring 
bush-grown ledge about a quarter of a mile away. 
It was then about four in the afternoon. The sun 
was getting low and it had turned quite cold. 
The excitement was rather high, the more as 
it had to be suppressed, and as the shadows 
grew deeper we began to see bears everywhere. 
Stroud would seize my arm and point, and his 
bear would turn into a boulder before my eyes. 
I would grab his arm, and my bear would become 
a log which he had been examining some time 
before. My friend Talbot, who was sitting by me, 
had similar experiences. It finally occurred to 
us to find out whose bear it was to be if he ap- 
peared. It was our custom to take alternate shots 
when hunting together, but this arrangement 
only applied to caribou, and did not include bears. 
Stroud tossed the one coin among us all, and its 
fall determined that the bear was mine if I could 
get him. 



Uwo Bears 139 

Phantom bears still kept appearing as the 
constantly changing shadows grew darker, but 
we pointed them out to each other less assertively 
than at first. It grew colder and colder. Stroud 
produced a bottle of something they call rum in 
Newfoimdland, and my companions basked in 
its glow at intervals. I knew it was no medicine 
for the eye and hand of a prospective bear shooter, 
and I shivered in solitary abstinence. It had 
become so dark that it would soon be impossible 
to see to shoot at all, and my friend, who had 
nothing to gain by waiting, suggested that we 
should give it up. I kept my eyes on the edge of 
the woods and agreed to go in fifteen minutes 
by Stroud's watch. I had hardly spoken when a 
black thing sticking up in the brush at the edge 
of the bog seemed to move, but the phantom 
bears had seemed to move too and I said nothing 
about it. The next instant it did move imques- 
tionably. A moment more and the creature was 
on the bog clear of the brush where he had been 
peering about to see if the coast was clear. He 
started across the bog headed for the caribou 
carcass with a quick shuffling gait, and loomed 
up in the dim Hght as big as a polo pony. Stroud 
had already taken his boots off as I turned to him. 



140 nn tbe •QClooOs auD on tbe Sbore 

" Take off your moccasins," he said. *' When 
he begins to feed we'll start for him." 

I was soon in my stocking feet, and we were 
watching, ready for the right moment, when 
suddenly the bear turned and started back as 
swiftly and silently as he had come. This was a 
bitter one for us and our plan of campaign was 
knocked in the head. The brush out of which 
the bear had come was at the upper edge of a 
wooded island just above the outcrop where we 
were concealed. There was a lead back of it, and 
as the bear kept on his course it was clear that 
our only chance was to get to the upper end of 
the adjoining island by the back lead and try 
to head him off. As soon as the bear disappeared 
aroimd the corner of the brush we started. Sub- 
sequent developments proved that the rocks were 
sharp and that the bog was very wet to our 
imshod feet, but we did not know about those 
things then. We were after that bear. Stroud 
was ahead moving swiftly and silently. As I 
went along at his elbow I threw my rifle up a few 
times until I found I could catch the ivory bead 
fairly, dark as it was. We found a noisy little 
brook coming down the lead which would make 
it difficult to hear any movement in the brush, 



Uwo Beats 141 

so it was necessary to be doubly on the alert. 
Suddenly a black shape rose above the brush 
across the brook, close to a bank covered with 
thick bushes. It was the bear, and Stroud had 
passed him. Thanks to my experiments I caught 
the white sight quickly on the creature's shoulder 
and fired. Down he went on all fours, and the 
next instant, before I could get in a second shot, 
had scrambled up the bank into the brush. I 
could see the movement of the foliage and sent 
two more bullets into it, though the bear had 
disappeared. We crossed over the brook, loaded 
up again, and stood listening close to the bank 
where the bear had climbed up. Stroud was 
sure the first shot was a hit. For a few minutes 
we heard nothing, then a half -smothered, groaning 
bellow sounded in the depths of the thicket. Then 
it was all quiet again. 

"He's dead," said Stroud, but he did not 
start into the thicket to pull him out. 

" Mebbe," said I, and I didn't either. 

The silence still continued, which might mean 
either that the bear really was dead or that he 
had stolen away, and I was by no means recon- 
ciled to remaining in ignorance until the morning. 

" We will go in a little way," I said, and we 



142 -ffn tbe TKHoo^s ant) on tbe Sbore 

climbed the bank where the bear had scaled it. 
The brush was waist high and I think we both 
felt easier when we found a big log a few yards 
ahead, on which we mounted for an observation. 
We could see our own feet at least, which was 
comforting. 

" The last brush I saw move was down by that 
birch," said Stroud, pointing to a tree about 
thirty yards away. 

If that was so it was obvious that the bear, 
quick or dead, could not be this side of it, so I 
came down from the log to work around to some 
better point of observation nearer the place he 
indicated. I had gone about a dozen paces through 
the brush when a low stiff spruce blocked my 
stride. I pushed through it and brought my 
unshod foot down full weight on something soft 
that rolled from under it. Needless to say I 
removed my foot and backed off that dozen 
paces through the brush considerably quicker 
than I had advanced them. I stood waiting with 
rifle at the ready, but nothing stirred. Stroud 
came down from the log and joined me, and we 
went back again. There w^as the bear quite dead, 
flat on his back with his paws outstretched. I 
had stepped on one of them. 



Uwo Bears 143 

To say that we were pleased puts it mildly. 
The creature w^as a large fat male, going w^ell to 
four hundred pounds according to the men's 
estimate, for of course we had no means of weigh- 
ing him. We signalled for Talbot and George, 
who soon came stumbling through the brush 
nearly as pleased as we were. We dragged the 
bear out of the thicket, did what we could towards 
dressing it, and then the three miles across the 
bog by starlight. We fell into holes and brooks 
in the darkness, and even when " Uncle John " 
finally took us through about half a mile of thick 
black spruce with an eight foot precipice concealed 
in the middle of it, — we all found it, one after 
the other, — and then waded us across the brook 
a quarter of a mile below our camp, we forgave him 
even these things. 

The next morning all hands went over to exam- 
ine and subsequently skin the bear and pack 
in the meat which the men intended to salt down 
in sundry big barrels they had brought along 
with them in the dories. A good many things 
seemed more clear by daylight, and among them 
that it was a remarkable piece of luck that we 
should have even seen the bear at all. He had 
not waited for darkness to come before going 



144 nn tbe 'QII100&6 an& on tbe Sbore 

after his caribou meat, but had come out in the 
mid-day while we were away, and had carried 
the whole thing over to the place where I first 
fired at him. In all probability he had picked 
it up in his fore paws and walked off with it, and 
the sight of the great creature out on the open 
bog would have been worth going miles to see. 
Why he should have come out again and gone 
over to the place from which he had removed 
his booty I have never been able to figure out. 
We picked up my three shells and found that he 
was about fifty yards away when the first bullet 
hit him, and that this one and one of those fired 
into the brush had done the work. Either one 
would have been enough. He had a good skin 
for so early in the fall, and was altogether a most 
satisfactory bear for a first attempt, barring the 
fact that he smelled abominably from the inter- 
rupted feast that he had carried around with him. 
It was five years before my lucky star and 
Ursa Major were again in conjunction, this 
time in northern New Brunswick. On various 
occasions William Bateman had waved his hand 
in an expansive manner towards the hills to the 
westward of our camp and declared that they 
were an excellent bear country, at least that they 



j 




M^Lj^^^j^ '^n^^^^ '^9'* 


1 






1 


1 ^^ 




m 


^ -^ 




1 


HB^' ^s 




1 







WILLIAM IlAll-.MAN CROSSING 44. 



Uwo Bears 145 

had been ten years before, when he and a certain 
Mr. Simpson had killed a " fatherly one " in 
that district, the memory of which was still 
green in the good William's mind. Relying on 
the hopes of the posterity of a bear with such 
characteristics as William's adjective suggested, 
we started early one cold September morning 
for the hills. It was barely daylight as we ate 
our breakfast, for we were to do in one day what 
was generally regarded as a two days' trip, 
and an early start was necessary if we were to 
hope to get back to camp by dark. The canoe 
was stiff and hard with the frost, and as the men 
poled up the stream through the mist still rising 
from the surface of the river, the drippings from 
their poles froze where they fell. At that hour in 
the morning there was a good chance of a shot 
on the banks of the river, and for awhile I held 
my rifle in my hands until the metal grew too 
chilled for comfort, for I had carelessly forgotten 
my mittens that morning, the first time they 
had been needed. About two miles up the river 
we landed at an old camp ground used in the 
spring by the driving crews, adjacent to the 
portage road which parallels the river at greater 
or less distance from its bank, extending on into 



146 iTn tbe XKI100&S ant) on tbe Sbore 

the wilderness to the farthest lumber camp. 
From there we followed the road, hard and 
whitened with the night's frost, for about two 
miles more till we coiild see the top of the nearest 
of the range of hills for which we were aiming 
frowning down through an opening among the 
tops of the trees. The sun was up by this time, 
and taking a hne for the bare gray granite we 
turned off to the right through the heavy timber. 
At first it was thick spruce and cedar with low 
branches so closely set as to be almost impassable, 
and the coldness of the morning was soon for- 
gotten as we struggled through it. As the ascent 
began there was more hard wood and the trees 
grew less thickly, making progress much easier. 
Soon we came upon a little brook trickling down 
from the hillside which we crossed, walking up 
the farther slope of its valley toward the summit. 
Higher still the ground became more open and 
the growth of the trees much smaller. Numerous 
signs of caribou appeared, keeping us on a con- 
stant lookout. Soon there was but a thin fringe 
of bushes between us and the bare hilltop, and as 
we came to the farther edge of it we stopped 
to reconnoitre the country which the last steep 
ascent had opened up before us. Down in the 




<:^y^ 



SPYING THF HILI.S. 



trwo Bears 147 

direction from which we had come we could see 
the line of the river as it flowed through the green 
forest, with here and there a flash of its waters at 
some bend or bogan. Directly across from us, 
winding down from another range of hills, was the 
line of the South Branch, joining with that of the 
" big river " almost opposite the mouth of Portage 
Brook which flowed down through its narrow 
valley at our feet. At the end of the valley a 
tinge of vivid blue showed where Lake Upsal- 
quitch lay almost hidden among the hills. The 
joining of the streams made a great cross in the 
green wilderness extending there before us. 
The opposite side of the valley which we had 
ascended was a bare hillside about half a mile 
away from where we were sitting. I was engaged 
in looking over a promising bit of country some- 
what farther afield through my glasses when Sam 
touched my ann. 

" There's one," he said, and following the direc- 
tion in which he pointed I saw a good -sized black 
bear busily engaged with some blueberry patches 
on the hillside across the valley about half-way 
up the slope. The only way to get him was to 
go for him, and leaving our sweaters and field 
glasses with William we started pell-mell down 



148 iTn tbe 'WIloo^5 ant) on tbe Sbore 

the hill. It was inevitable that we should lose 
sight of the bear as we entered the woods at the 
bottom of the valley, but we had observed that 
the general direction which he was taking was up 
the slope and to the right, and the only chance 
seemed to be to climb the hill and strike his line 
if possible. The rush down the hill and the 
scramble through the trees had so thoroughly 
winded both of us that we rested a few minutes 
before starting up on the farther side of the valley. 
I doubt if I could have hit the hill, much less the 
bear, in the condition to which our race had 
brought me. After getting our breath again we 
started on, I in the lead, following the line of 
some stumps and bushes which we had taken as 
landmarks, but there was no sign of the bear 
anywhere. We had no reason to believe that he 
had seen or heard us, for we had been concealed 
among the trees during the greater part of the 
distance which we had covered and the wind was 
favourable for our approach from that direc- 
tion. 

As we kept on we saw a large patch of under- 
growth ahead of us on the line we were following, 
and it seemed probable that the bear had been 
heading for that when we had first observed him. 



Uwo JSears 149 

and that he had now gained it, as he was nowhere 
in sight in the open. There seemed to be nothing 
to do but admit defeat and sweeten the taste of 
it with the deHcious blueberries which grew every- 
where about us. We feasted for awhile on the 
great blue clusters and then turned back towards 
the hill from which we had come. We located 
William sitting where we had left him on the side 
of the hill, when I happened to notice a black 
spot on the fiat summit above him. It moved 
in a moment, and another bear came out from 
behind a patch of bushes which had concealed 
all but one end of him. The wind was blowing 
from us, but by swinging to the left, well up on 
the side of the high ridge from which the two 
lower hills extended, — which took us around the 
end of the wooded valley we had just crossed, 
— we avoided all danger of being winded and 
were able to keep our game in sight every moment 
during the stalk, a most desirable thing in still 
hunting. Sometimes it is impossible to do so, 
as when a suitable approach must be gained by a 
long detour over hilly ground, but the game that 
is once lost to sight for any length of time is 
seldom more than a memory dear, particularly 
in a wooded country. Sit down and wait and see 



150 iTn tbc TKIloot)s an& on tbe Sbore 

what will happen, and be sure that as the present 
approaches the impossible, the situation is almost 
bound to change for the better. The point is to 
know when it changes and be able to grasp the 
new opportunity the moment it occurs. Your 
intended victim is not picketed in the spot where 
you have sighted him, and as you start away 
in one direction bent upon his circumvention, 
no logic of yours will prevent him from changing 
all his plans the moment the ledge or thicket is 
between you, and wandering off in quite the 
opposite one. 

This time the fates were more kind. This bear 
was also eating blueberries and moved slowly 
from bush to bush on the flat top of the hill, 
occasionally sitting down on his haimches like 
a dog, viewing the wonderful scenery perhaps, 
before returning to the blueberries. We finally 
worked well down to leew^ard of the bear and 
started directly for him, keeping the small spruces 
and old fire-scarred stumps, which fortunately 
were quite frequent, in our line of approach. 
At about one hundred yards' distance we were still 
not discovered, but a nearer shot was desirable if 
it could be had, as the blueberry bushes were 
rather high where he was feeding, so Sam stepped 



Uwo Bears isi 

behind a stump while I crawled on alone. I 
stopped behind another stump about sixty yards 
away from the bear and took breathing space. 
It was near enough, and as the animal raised his 
head I fired. It looked like a most egregious miss. 
The bear gathered his hind quarters under him 
with a great leap and was going at full tilt across 
the open faster than I had ever supposed a bear 
could go, looking more like a rolling ball of wavy 
black fur than a creature with four legs. I led him 
a foot or two, fired again, and saw the moss fly 
from the ground on my side of him in a line 
with his shoulder. My hopes were at the vanish- 
ing point, as was the bear almost, as he had 
nearly reached the drop from the summit of the 
hill, but before the rifle was re-loaded for a third 
shot the furry ball stopped short, collapsed and 
was still. Sam came up on the run and a few 
moments later William appeared over the brow 
of the hill reporting whizzing sounds over his 
head immediately before. The bear was a fine 
one, of good size, with unusually fine fur for so 
early in the season, and the guides were soon at 
work taking off the skin. It developed that both 
shots had taken effect, the first one straight 
through the shoulder, but a little high for quick 



152 iin tbe T1XI100&S an& on tbe Sbore 

results, and the second apparently on the rico- 
chet, entering just below the first and ranging 
further forward. As we worked at the skin 
William told us how the bear we had first ap- 
proached had wandered along in the direction in 
which he was first headed and then had turned 
to the left without apparent cause or purpose 
and had disappeared around the fall of the hill. 
This had happened before we had come out of the 
woods at the bottom of the valley. He had 
tried to signal to us when we emerged, but we 
had failed to notice his signal and had conse- 
quently kept along in exactly the wrong direction 
until we had given up the chase. 

While the men were bus}^ I looked over the bare 
hillsides from time to time with the field glasses 
in the hope of seeing a wandering caribou. After 
a number of fruitless observations I picked up 
a black spot on the far side of the first hill which 
did not seem to have been there before. It was 
the first bear again, apparently coming up from 
further down the hill, and we started for him on 
the run, back around the end of the little valley. 
The wind was right for a good approach, but when 
we arrived where he ought to have been, the 
animal had vanished a second time, and no 



XTwo Bears 153 

search from the commanding point we gained 
showed hide or hair of him. 

It was now well past the usual time to " bile " 
and we started back again for William and our 
various belongings. The work was done on the 
bear when we arrived, and after fruitless efforts 
to make a decent pack of the slippery, gliding 
skin with our belts and a piece of twine, we 
crammed it into Sam's sweater and started for 
the height of the ridge, with the idea of following 
it along to the westward and looking over what 
country might be opened up on the other side. 
The blueberries through which we tramped in 
the next half-mile would have fed whole families. 
On the rocky wind-swept summit we got out 
the glasses and almost at the same moment we 
all discovered a black spot on the nearest hill 
beyond. It was a small spot, for it was a small 
bear that made it this time. We watched him 
a few moments to get his line of travel, and then 
started for him along the slope of the ridge, 
intending to circle the end of the valley that 
separated us and come upon him from above. 
I insisted that we must keep our game in sight 
every moment, and so we tried to do, but it 
proved impossible. A patch of stunted birch 



154 i[n tbe Moo^s an& on tbe Sbore 

and maple spread over a part of the hillside, a 
narrow strip of it, not more than fifty yards wide, 
extending far down the slope. We located our 
bear before we entered this and left him sitting 
on his haunches taking breath from his gorging 
on the blueberries. As we approached the 
farther side of the strip of woods, I dropped be- 
hind a little, getting my glasses from the case, 
and was thirty feet or so in the rear of the other 
two, when they stopped short, Sam beckoning and 
pointing towards some game in sight. For some 
reason I was certain that we had come upon a 
caribou feeding out beyond the edge of the woods, 
and crept forward as quickly and noiselessly as 
I could in the thicket we were in, looking through 
the branches for a glimpse of it. 

" Lower," whispered Sam, pointing low down 
through the brush. About thirt}^ yards down the 
hill was a patch of black about a foot square in 
among the green. It was moving slowly to the 
left where the thicket was the closest and in a 
moment would be gone, I fired and ran after 
the shot. The black spot had disappeared, and 
only the sound of breaking brush to the left of 
me told in which direction the creature had gone. 
It all happened in a second, and I was not much 



trwo Bears ~ 155 

surprised to find there was no blood on the sHght 
trail the bear had left. I had fired too quickly, 
and as is often the case in shooting down-hill, had 
doubtless overshot, only an inch or so perhaps, 
but enough to miss the chance of bagging two 
separate bears, travelling alone, on the same 
day. In all probability the bear was the one we 
had first seen. He had probably kept on farther 
around the hill than we could see after our second 
trip after him, and was now making his way back 
to the blueberry patches. When Sam had first 
seen him he was coming up the hill directly 
towards us in full sight. In the few moments it 
had taken me to come up and get my thoughts 
from caribou to bears the animal had turned and 
had so nearly disappeared that in another instant 
I would not have seen him at all. It seemed 
incredible that we should have approached so near 
him making the noise we did through the thicket, 
but he apparently had no thought of danger 
until the shot was fired, all of which goes to prove 
that even the bear sometimes nods, and that 
eternal vigilance is the price of success in bear 
hunting even as it is of liberty. 

As a corollary to this misfortune, when we 
looked for the little bear he too had vanished, 



156 Un tbe TKHooDs auD on tbe Sbore 

doubtless frightened by the shot. However, it 
had been a successful day as it was, and taking 
a course for the portage road, as we could see the 
line of it slashed through the forest across the 
valley, we started on the descent. The hill 
was steep and the rocks on its slope were sharp 
and insecure, and we were glad enough to reach 
the timber line, where the slope was more gentle, 
with moss and loam for footing instead of jagged 
granite. Just beyond the edge of the trees we 
came upon a spring, where we stopped for our 
belated lunch. The ground was trampled like 
a barn-yard all around it, moose and caribou 
tracks everywhere. Two bear wallows showed 
recent visitation, and there was hardly a tree that 
did not have hairs clinging to its bark and marks 
of horns upon it. William had a slogan of his 
own, as the signal for taking the trail again, the 
only variation depending upon whether it was 
ascending or descending: 

" Now, Bill down the hill 
For another moose to kill," 

and after our pipes we were off again. At the 
bottom of the valley we ran across some beaver 
works, which necessitated a wade across the back- 



Uwo Beats 157 

water they had made nearly to our waists, but 
most of the going was through princess pine and 
we soon made the road. Two moose had travelled 
over it since we had left it in the morning, a cow 
and her well-grown calf, according to the tracks. 
It was after sunset when we reached the canoe, 
and its ribbed wooden bottom felt like a cushioned 
ottoman as I stretched out my stiffening legs upon 
it. It was down stream, so Sam and William 
took it easy too, and soon the glow of the camp- 
fire appeared around the bend of the river. 

The lady of the camp welcomed us at the landing 
and was duly appreciative of the " partridges " 
which William told her were in Sam's sweater. 
When the great black head and the glossy fur rolled 
out at her feet and she finally absorbed the fact 
that the much desired rug was a reality, her 
expressions of satisfaction were such that I shall 
not venture to describe them. 




Z\)C ©petting of tbe Seasott 

[T was the opening day of the season in 
New Brunswick in 1906. Two days 
before a tremendous wind storm had 
blown down nearly all the trees that had sur- 
rounded the camp-ground which we had first 
selected as our base of operations, and we had 
moved up the river a half day's journey in the 
canoes to another hunting country, the centre 
of which was a small lake about a mile in from 
the river on the opposite side from that on which 
we had pitched our tents in a poplar grove. The 
tall white trunks made a much more cheerful 
environment than the black surfaces of the firs 
and spruces with which we had become familiar, 
and the outlying ones furnished an inexhaustible 
supply of excellent fire-wood, a most important 
item in one's domestic economy in the woods. 
I say economy, but wavStefulness would be a more 
suitable term for the woodsman's absolute wanton- 

168 



trbe ©penfng of tbe Season 159 

ness in the use of wood. It was the first year I 
had taken my wife with me into the woods, for 
the very good reason that it was the first year 
that I had had a wife to take, and on one occasion, 
throwing convention aside, she expressed a desire 
for a piece of spruce gum. One of the guides 
wandered off a few rods and the next thing down 
came a big spruce tree for the sake of a particu- 
larly fine globule just above the reach of his axe. 
The cook would pile on great sticks of birch or 
poplar to heat the water with which to wash 
his dishes, and at night a quarter of a cord would 
go on the fireplace as soon as the kettles were off 
the pole. 

We would need a canoe at the lake, so after 
our mid -day dinner we started off, all hands, 
to tote the lightest of our flotilla into it, where 
Sam was to remain with Mrs. Ware and myself 
for the evening calling. On that very day seven 
years before I had been with Sam at the little 
pond where the big black moose had come to us, 
and In optimistic bravado I had been assuring 
him and my wife that history was bound to repeat 
itself that night. Sam had preserved a discreet 
silence until that very morning, when he an- 
nounced that he had dreamed of horns during the 



160 nn tbe MOO&S ant) on tbe Sbore 

night, which was a sure sign of moose to come. 
I think my wife still remained open to conviction 
even with this new evidence before her, but her 
courage was good, and she hit the trail, what 
there was of it, ready for what might befall us, 
good luck or bad. The way to the lake was not 
the smoothest, but we made good time and soon 
had the canoe in the water, after first making 
sure that nothing was in sight on the shores. 
William and Fred started back to the home 
camp, while Sam paddled us over to a small 
island about sixty yards out from our side of 
the lake, which was to be our calling place. On 
one side of the island was a beaver house, the 
largest one I have ever seen, certainly eighteen 
feet in diameter at the water's edge, and rising 
five feet or more above it. We landed on this, 
resting the prow of the canoe on a convenient 
log which the beavers had provided as a landing- 
place clear of the rustling bushes. It was still too 
early to begin to call, so we made ourselves as com- 
fortable as we could on the interwoven sticks and 
communed in whispers about the things we could 
see and hear, while Sam prowled over the little 
island looking for the best place from which to call . 
It was almost perfectly still when we arrived there 




BKAVKK HOUSE AT BLUE LEDGE LAKE. 




DOUBLE BEAVER DAM, SHOWINC LOWER ABUTMENT KOR PROTECTION 

AGAINST ICE. 



Ube ©peninQ of tbe Season 161 

and what little wind there had been died away 
as the sun went down. A white-throated sparrow 
perched on the topmost twig of a spruce on the 
shore was piping his shrill song — a tiny thing 
to break so profound a silence. The surface of 
the lake was like a mirror except where now and 
then the break of a rising trout disturbed the 
reflection of the trees around its shores. I hap- 
pened to notice three slight wakes on the surface 
of the water, apparently coming nearer, and in a 
few moments three grebes, the makers of the 
gentle disturbance, were paddling in the lily 
pads beside us. We soon discovered the outline 
of the beavers' dam at the outlet down below us, 
and as we spoke of the wonderful skill and industry 
of its engineers, a heavier ripple appeared coming 
from it in our direction. The glasses showed that 
it was a full-grown beaver apparently returning 
to his house after an inspection of the outposts. 
He came directly toward us until we could see 
his bright eyes and bristling whiskers. He had 
not seen us, but if he had been conscious of his 
audience he could not have devised more enter- 
taining feats for our admiration. He swam about 
before us in circles, figure eights and other won- 
derful evolutions, ending his performance with 



162 fin tbe 'CXIloo^s an& on tbe Sbore 

a resounding slap of his broad tail as he dived, 
doubtless for the entrance of his house, as we 
saw him no more that evening. 

Sam nov/ rejoined us and after a few prelimi- 
nary smothered coughs and grunts sent forth a 
full mellow call echoing across the lake. 

The practice of calling moose during the 
rutting season has been sharply criticized by 
certain writers on matters of sport. They contend 
that it is hardly a decent thing to do, and base 
their briefs on the proposition that it is unfair to 
call an animal within shot by appealing to its 
most blinding passion. Personally, I cannot see 
that there is any greater unfairness in appealing 
to one rather than to another of a creature's 
appetites. It is regarded as highly praiseworthy 
to sit in ambush by a carcass to await the coming 
of a hungry bear, the slaying of which will prob- 
ably be no more dangerous to the hunter than 
the shooting of a doe. By the same token, we use 
our best efforts to deceive, outwit, surprise and 
bushwhack every living thing we pursue in still 
hunting, and seize every smallest advantage 
whereby we may get near enough to shoot it, in 
the back if necessary, and as if this were not 
enough, we enlist horse and hound in our warfare 



XTbe ©penfng of tbe Season 163 

against their fellow beasts. Coming down to 
strict analysis there is no such thing as fairness 
to the game in hunting. The hunter has his 
great advantage the moment he takes his rifle 
in his hands, and it has always struck me as rather 
absurd to decry any particular way he may 
choose to take the opportunity to use it, so long 
as the ultimate test remains his own nerve and 
marksmanship. For example, a hunter looking 
out over a barren suddenly discovers a moose 
standing in the open within shot, and drops it 
with a bullet through the heart. That is a great 
piece of luck and the event is memorable. Like- 
wise if the moose be encountered while the hunter 
is paddling down a stream or lake, offering a fair 
broadside shot as it stands upon the shore, this 
too is excellent sport, but according to the critics. 
he who calls the moose to the barren or to the 
shore is without honour or sportsmanship. If 
there is unfairness in killing a baited bear or a 
decoyed duck, then it is unfair to call a moose, 
but not otherwise. Let me admit at once that one 
will often get a shot at a moose by calling him 
when one would never be obtained at that season 
except by blind luck if still hunting, but I do not 
think this has anything to do with the ethics 



164 nn tbe MOO&S an& on tbe Sbore 

of the question. Indeed it suggests the sophistical 
argument that if the moose with its acute senses 
pitted against the duller faculties of the hunter 
will avail himself of his natural advantages, why 
should not the hunter avail himself of any means 
of offsetting them which his intelligence may 
devise? The moose lives in the thick woods, 
where still hunting is practically impossible with 
any stillness, until the snow comes to deaden the 
sound of one's footsteps and show the tracks of 
the game. The Norwegian practice of hunting 
with an " elk hound " in leash might be successful 
at this season, but I never heard of it being 
attempted in the Canadian woods, and if the 
hunter wandered aimlessly through the woods, 
which is about all he could do at that season, he 
would probably never see hide or hair of a moose 
in his journeys. If he would be content to stand 
guard at some well-trodden spot on the shore 
of a stream or lake for a week or two, he might 
get a shot, but there would be little enjoyment or 
sport in such an undertaking. All the forces of 
chance and nature are against the hunter coming 
to the moose, and if he is able to bring the moose 
to him, who shall say that it is unfair? Men of 
experience in moose hunting say that in the 



Ubc ©pening of tbe Season 165 

western country the call is of no effect whatever, 
and the hunters of those parts are thereby freed 
from all cavil. Others question whether the 
bull comes in response to the call of sex or from 
the desire to do battle, in which latter case the 
argument of the critics is shattered for all time. 
]\Iy own experience has been that in each case 
where I killed after calling, the bull undoubtedly 
supposed he was gnmting to a female of his 
kind, and I think that is the basis on which the 
call is answered in the New Brunswick woods. 
This admits the theory of the critics of moose- 
calling, but so be it. We all hunt for the excite- 
ment of the thing, in whatever way it may hap- 
pen to appeal to us. One may find his greatest 
satisfaction in the tense moments of anticipation. 
Another forgets all else in the quick calculations 
for the shot. There are as many minds as men 
and those moments of exaltation come to each in 
his own way. That they may come is the real 
purpose of our quest. The spreading antlers 
and the furry hides are the mere tangible evidence 
of their occurrence, and so long as they may 
be attained, with due restraint from wantonness 
and the infliction of needless distress and suffering, 
criticism of the ways or means of any particular 



166 Hn tbe Moobs ant) on tbe Sbore 

manner of pursuit seems little more than captious. 
It is not intended that he who can find pleasure in 
the bludgeoning of a hounded, swimming deer 
or in the knifing of a drift-bound moose shall find 
moral support in this. Let him betake himself 
to the slaughter-house and leave the woods for 
those to whom the taking of life is not the all 
in all of sport, but that part of it mostly to be 
regretted. 

As " The Cynic's Calendar " hath it, " Many 
are called but few get up," and that applies as 
well to moose as to men. As a matter of fact, 
comparatively few moose are shot through their 
coming directly to the call. Sometimes it happens 
that the approaching bull will come just so far 
and no farther, and stand hidden among the 
trees, out of sight and shot from the calling place. 
Then the hunter must stalk his game with all the 
skill he has, for the beast is on the alert, all nose 
and ears and eyes. More frequently it happens 
that though the bull may answer the evening 
call, he will not come out into the open until far 
into the night. In that case the hunter has his 
choice of lying out or going back to camp and 
returning the next morning as soon as he can see 
his sights, when the bull will probably still be in 



XTbe ©penino ot tbe Season 167 

the open. The call has its greatest value in bring- 
ing about these so-called " morning shots," nearly 
every one of which means a careful stalk for 
its accomplishment. In practice, therefore, the 
call is not the summoning of a passion-blinded 
beast to his doom at the hands of his ambushed 
executioner, but rather a means of bringing the 
animal within sight or hearing for a fair sporting 
shot at it, to be gained subsequently by the 
hunter's own exertions and skill. Sometimes the 
bull does come straight for the caller, and if there 
is still light enough for straight shooting he pays 
the penalty, even as does the duck that swings 
too confidingly to the decoys. It may be, on the 
other hand, that when the moose makes his 
appearance after an evening call, it will be so 
dark that acciirate shooting is an impossibility, 
and in this to my mind lies the one ground of 
reasonable criticism of this method of hunting 
the animal. In the darkness the animal will 
sometimes be wounded and get away, either to 
undergo a useless death or much suffering before 
eventual recovery, neither of which is pleasant to 
contemplate apart from the loss of the game itself. 
Confession and avoidance is the only plea to this, 
for such a misfortune does sometimes happen, 



168 Hn tbe XKI100&5 anD on tbe Sbore 

but so does it too in other modes of hunting, with 
perhaps more than equal frequency in the average 
of shots taken. A still hunter may see a patch 
of hair over the top of a ledge or through an 
opening in a thicket under such conditions that 
he knows that he must take the chance that offers 
or none at all. It is too much to ask frail human 
nature to lower rifle and about-face with game 
in sight. We would all like a broadside shot at 
a hundred yards at all our prospective victims, 
but in the optimism of the moment we take 
what the fates have sent us. To-day one's luck 
is good and the game drops with a bullet in the 
neck. To-morrow when a similar shot offers, 
the creature bounds away, struck in a less vital 
spot, to suffer and perhaps die far from all pos- 
sible pursuit. In hunting in the mountains and 
on the plains, where long range shooting is the 
rule of necessity, the average game wounded to 
game clean killed is probably even greater than 
in hunting in the wooded country, where most 
of the shots are at comparatively close range, 
but no one has as yet suggested that there is any 
lack of sportsmanship in attempting these long 
chances where the probabilities, at least for the 
ordinary marksman, are all against a killing hit 



Ube ©penino ot tbe Season i69 

at such distances. With the possibility of such 
a mischance in mind when moose calling, the 
only thing is to do the best one may to avoid it, 
and my own rule is, do not call too late. If you 
have had no answer up to an hour before dusk, 
go back to camp. Perhaps your bull will be 
out in the morning when the daylight is coming 
instead of going. If you have had an answer and 
the beast is shy and still at a distance at that 
time, again go home and return with the rising 
sun, or better yet a little earlier. Sometimes a 
bull will answer almost the first call and start to 
come. He arrives almost at hand, but as condi- 
tions are against attempting to stalk him from 
the calling place, and as he is still coming, the 
only thing to do is to wait. He is perhaps a 
laggard in his love and he comes slowly but still 
nearer and nearer. You know that the sun has 
set, but you could see your sights a few moments 
ago, and that very instant the moose had banged 
his horns on the tree trunks not two hundred 
yards away. Far be it from me to say what one 
should do under such conditions as these. On 
this day of which I write, I did what seemed 
right and best at the moment, and though no 
spreading antlers were the result, the whole 



170 nn tbe moo&s ant> on tbe Sbore 

experience was one which I have never equalled. 
The setting of the stage was perfect. The time 
of waiting and anticipation the most tense and 
thrilling, and the complete climax wanting only 
through conditions which could not be known. 

While we have been discussing the ethics of 
moose-calling, Sam, regardless of the pros and 
cons, has sent two more calls resounding towards 
the mountain-side across the lake. I had heard 
no answer, but there was still plenty of time 
before sunset. It had grown quite chilly and I 
was helping my wife with her ulster when Sam 
called the fourth time. As the echo ceased, the 
stillness was so intense as to be almost sound in 
itself, like " darkness visible." I thought I heard 
something half-way up on the mountain-side and 
listened. The next moment I knew I was right 
as I heard a bull's grunt plainly. 

" An answer, Sam," I whispered, and pointed 
to the direction. 

His face grew tense with excitement as he 
listened for a repetition of the sound, holding his 
horn to his ear like a megaphone. It came again 
in a moment. We all heard it this time, and there 
was no question about it as the answer came from 
the forest-covered side of the moimtain across the 



Ubc ©pening ot tbe Season i7i 

lake. In a moment we were in the canoe, my 
wife amidships, I at the bow, and Sam with the 
paddle at the stem. We stopped and listened 
again before rounding the end of the little island 
and leaving the concealment which it had offered 
us. We heard the smite of horns a little further 
to the right of the point from which the answers 
had come and a little lower on the mountain-side, 
showing that the bull was fairly on his way to 
the call. Sooner or later we should have to cross 
to that side of the lake, and it seemed best to do 
it now while the bull was still well back in the 
woods. A few noiseless strokes of the paddle 
soon brought us to the opposite shore, close in 
to the high grass which bordered it, with the 
canoe lying parallel to the course which the moose 
was apparently taking. It seemed a long time 
before we heard another sound from the creature, 
and Sam ventured another low call, holding the 
mouth of his birch bark horn close to the surface 
of the water. A low grunt came in quick response, 
much nearer but still well up the hill. A little 
later we heard another blow of his horns on a 
tree, and soon afterwards a soft swishing, as of 
the disturbance of low branches. Soon he was 
so near that in the perfect stillness we could hear 



172 fln tbe MooDs auD on tbe Sbore 

the sound of his hoofs, moving slowly, but still 
in our direction over the soft carpeting of the 
moss. Then came another long period of waiting 
without a sound. We had lost all track of the 
lapse of time, at least as measured by hours or 
minutes. When w^e had crossed the lake the sun 
was wtII above the western skyline of the un- 
broken fringe of evergreens. Nov.- the sun had 
sunk below it, and though the sky behind the 
silhouetted trees was still glowing red, black 
shadows were already creeping out from them 
towards us in a manner that was most alarming, 
for it was evident that if the bull came out at 
all, the place of his advent would be among them. 
If by some happy chance he had taken his course 
towards the east instead of towards the west, he 
would have come out at the lower end of the lake 
where the waters still reflected the glowing colours 
of the sky, and the green of the grass and bushes 
along the shore was still undimmed. At our end 
of the lake the shadows grew blacker every instant. 
The last we had heard from the bull showed that 
he was very near us, probably not two hundred 
yards away in the woods, and in all probability he 
was still standing there listening. It would have 
been impossible to have made a landing from the 



Zbc ©penina ot tbe Season 173 

canoe to him, owing to the thickness of the alders 
and the swampiness of the shore. He would have 
heard the scrape of the canoe the minute the 
bow touched the bank. Sam called again very 
softly and splashed the water a few times with 
the horn, as if a cow were walking about in it. 
We heard the bull start again with a grunt, and 
I motioned to Sam to shoot the canoe out into 
the lake and try to get a position above the place 
for which the bull seemed to be headed, so that 
I might have the shadows behind me as much as 
possible, and be able to swing my rifle towards 
the left rather than to the right. A few strokes 
of the paddle did what seemed necessary, and 
as they were being made we could hear the bull 
on shore moving rapidly through the alders, 
which cracked and rustled as the big animal went 
through them. He had apparently made up his 
mind to come out and was coming fast. In a few 
moments the sound ceased and I watched the 
spot where I had last heard him, expecting to 
see the bull come through the brush the next 
second. It was still light enough to see that bit 
of the shore with some distinctness, and I felt 
confident of a successful shot if the bull proved 
large enough to fire at at all. Just then Sam 



174 tn tbe Moo^s ant) on tbe Sbore 

gave a call, imitating a bull's grunt of challenge, 
as things were not moving quite quickly enough 
to suit him. The next instant there was the 
sound of breaking brush a short distance to the 
right of the point I was covering, and then a tre- 
mendous crash and splashing from the very- 
blackest of the shadows a little beyond. Sam 
swung the bow of the canoe further to the right 
and paddled silently towards the sound. I could 
see a black bulk looming against the other black- 
ness and heard Sam whisper " It's a good spread." 
He was sitting higher in the canoe than I was, 
for from my position I could not make out defi- 
nitely which end of the animal was which. As 
he had approached from the left, I figured that 
the shoulder must be at the right hand end of 
the black mass and levelled the rifle, holding low. 
The flash and the echoing report were followed 
by another great crash, and I knew that the 
animal was down. There was more splashing 
and then we heard brush breaking to the left, 
and remembering that I had once stopped an 
unseen bear under similar conditions, I fired the 
four other shots in the rifle, aiming at the points 
from which the sounds came. Then the perfect 
silence fell again, even more intense than before 



XTbe ©pening of tbe Season 175 

in the darkness. It seemed as if the creature 
must be down or we should hear him in such 
thick woods if he were still running. Sam thought 
he had heard him drop, and in a few moments 
we were on shore with the lighted lantern. We 
soon found blood and followed the trail of it some 
distance up the hill. Then we lost it and it seemed 
better to give up the search and come over again 
in the morning to find the moose, which Sam felt 
sure was lying somewhere within a short distance. 
Back in the canoe we crossed the lake and made 
our way out to the river over the rough trail by 
lantern. We were elated at starting the season 
so successfully. The omens had been vindicated, 
and my wife had had an experience on her first 
moose hunt such as comes to few women, or men 
either for that matter. Her only regret was that 
she had not seen the moose at all. Sitting as 
she was on the bottom of the canoe low down, 
her opportunity for seeing was the least favour- 
able, but the fact that she did not see the big 
creature within thirty yards of her will give some 
idea of how dark it was. 

We were all impatient to be on the trail again 
the next morning. We found the spots of blood 
and followed the trail along to where we had lost 



176 iTn tbe '(KI100&S ant) on tbe Sbore 

it the night before. WilHam soon found it again, 
leading up the hillside. This seemed to him a 
very bad sign, for he said the moose would 
probably not go up hill if he were badly wounded. 
My wife and I follow^ed up the hill for about a 
mile and then returned to the lake with hearts 
downcast with disappointment to aw^ait the men 
there and try the fishing. The trout were plenti- 
ful and hungry and rose to the flies half a dozen 
at a time, — not large fish, but averaging half 
to three-quarters of a pound. After about three 
hours of waiting William appeared on the shore 
and I paddled down to him. 

" Where are the horns? " I said. 

" He'll grow another pair next year," was the 
answer. 

It appeared that the men had followed the 
trail, slight as it soon became, nearly four miles 
over the moimtain and down on the other side 
towards the south branch of the river. At one 
time they must have been very near to the moose, 
for they found a bed where he had been lying, 
and farther on a second and a third one. The 
last two showed that they had been occupied 
but a short time, and had doubtless been made 
after the animal had been started from his first 



XTbe ©pentna of tbe Season 177 

resting-place. Here William had found evidence 
that one bullet had struck fair on the right 
shoulder, but at such an angle that it had come 
out in front through the lower neck instead of 
going straight through the bod}^. The imprint 
of the horns on the ground showed that the head 
was not a large one, though of fair size. William's 
discoveries made it clear that the animal must have 
been standing obliquely to the shot instead of 
broadside-on as I had supposed in the darkness, 
in which case the shot w^ould have been a fatal 
one at once. As it was, William was certain that 
the moose had only suffered a rather severe flesh 
wound, which would have no permanent results, 
as the tracks gave no sign of a broken leg or 
shoulder. I would rather have missed him clean 
than this, but there was no help for it, and I knew 
that I had lived moments such as might never 
come again, even as it was. 

We had some of our trout, fresh from the 
water, for lunch, and in the afternoon went with 
William to the upper end of the lake where we 
landed him to hunt up a little pond he knew about 
not far away. Inside of half an hour he was 
back again. He had come within sight of the 
pond, discovered four moose in it, and had hur- 



178 Hn tbe 1KI100&S an& on tbe Sbore 

ried back to us without waiting to see whether 
they were cows or bulls. We followed him 
through the low princess pine over the ridge, and 
soon came to the edge of a bog in the middle 
of which was a long narrow pond, the lower end 
of it hidden in alders growing on its borders. 
We could see three black lumps in that part of 
the pond which was open to us, and in a moment 
or two the ungainly head and neck of a cow moose 
came up, dripping, beside one of them. Then 
two other heads appeared, both of cows, one of 
them holding a lily root in her mouth. The fourth 
animal had doubtless wandered up behind the 
alders, for it was not in sight. With so many 
cows about William thought that the vanished 
one was probably a bull, and we waited to see 
if he would not put in appearance again. The 
black flies bit like fiends as we sat on the moss 
behind two shielding junipers, but the possibility 
of a shot was a good one with the cows about, and 
they were interesting to w^atch in the meantime. 
The field glasses brought them very near and we 
could see every movement. They were after 
lily roots, and I was surprised to see how long 
they could keep their heads under the water. 
I had no watch with me, but I think two minutes 



Ubc ©pening of tbe Season 179 

would not be an excessive estimate for the time 
they would be down. We watched them swashing 
and wallowing about for nearly an hour, until 
they too disappeared behind the fringe of alders. 

On the way back to the canoe we blazed a good 
trail from our observatory for future use, as it 
seemed about the best one there was. The cow 
moose seemed to be living about the pond, and 
if there was not a bull with them already there 
soon would be in all probability. 

The next night we called at the lake but had 
no answer. The next morning we found the 
tracks of a large bull just where we had landed to 
go over the ridge to the little pond, and followed 
them well down to the bog. He had evidently 
come over to the call during the night and gone 
back again to the less ethereal charmers of the 
pond. On the afternoon of the second day from 
this I went over to the lake with Sam, intending 
to have a look-in at the little pond, the wind 
being particularly favourable for approaching it, 
and then to call at the lake later if we found 
nothing in sight. It was the first time that my 
wife had not gone with me, but we had just 
returned that noon from an over-night trip in the 
hills, and this and the memory of the black flies 



180 iTn tbe uaoo^s an& on tbc Sbore 

that other afternoon made her decide to stay in 
camp. It was arranged that in case of good luck 
I should fire two quick shots ten minutes after 
the event. 

It was five o'clock when we left camp and 
we made quick time to our lookout at the edge 
of the bog. The wind was blowing hard directly 
in our faces as we peered out through the low 
branches of the junipers. Almost at the same 
instant we both saw a moose standing beside a 
bunch of alders on the far shore of the little pond. 
His head was down and partly concealed by the 
brush, so that it was impossible to tell much about 
it even with the glasses, but the shape of the 
animal showed that it was a bull and a very large 
and very black one, undoubtedly the same one 
whose track we had seen a few mornings before. 
In a moment he raised his head, and much to 
our disappointment we saw that it was a very 
small one, the antlers showing but slight pal- 
mation with only four or five points on each. We 
thought we would see how near we could get to 
him and crawled out from our ambush on hands 
and knees into a game trail through the bog so 
deeply trodden that the low bushes on the sides 
sufficed to conceal our movements completely. 



Ube ®penina ot tbe Season i8i 

We stopped at a tree close by the shore, not over 
thirty yards from the moose on the opposite 
side. He was entirely unaware of our presence, 
and we knelt there watching him as he splashed 
about. It would have been a great opportunity 
to take a picture, but of course the camera had 
been left behind. The bull was not feeding and 
seemed to have no particular object in view, and 
eventually wandered off into some woods at the 
lower end of the pond. We waited until he had 
disappeared before starting to return to the 
lake and had just risen from our knees when we 
heard the sound of splashing off to the right. 
We dropped down again and watched in that 
direction. In a moment two white objects rose 
side by side above the level of the bog and dis- 
appeared again as another bull gave us a momen- 
tary glimpse of his broad, newly polished horns. 
We could not see the body of the animal at all 
and thought that he must be lying down in the 
bog. We worked back to gain a better line of 
approach more directly up the wind, and leaving 
Sam I crawled along in another favouring game 
trail to take the shot. It was wet enough down 
there in the mud, and occasional logs lying across 
the trail added other difficulties to the path. 



182 nn tbe MooDs ant) on tbe Sbore 

I moved along slowly, both by intention as well 
as from necessity, for there was plenty of time 
and I did not want to be out of breath for the 
shot when I came to the bull, whose whereabouts 
were still most indefinite. After crawling about 
sixty yards I stopped for an observation, and 
after a moment's waiting up came the white 
horns again from the bog about one hundred 
yards away, but still no sight of any other part 
of the creature. As the horns disappeared I 
moved on again, and judging that I had gone about 
half the intervening distance raised up for an- 
other look. This time I discovered that an arm 
of the pond which we did not know existed lay 
directly in front of me, and shoulder deep in the 
water, close in to the bank on my side, stood 
the bull. His head was under water and all 
I could see of him was the line of his back rising 
out a few inches, over the bushes. The animal 
had not been lying down at all, but standing as 
he was on the lower level, the bank and bushes 
had sufficed to conceal him from us. He raised 
his head in a few moments, snorted the water 
from his nose, looked about him and went under 
again. 

There was no need for further concealment nor 



Ubc ©penfng ot tbe Season i83 

caution, for the bull was now deaf and dumb 
and blind so long as he would keep his. head 
under. I rushed ahead until I could see the whole 
body clear of the bank and waited for him. 
As his head came up I fired and the whole fore- 
quarters of the animal came above the surface in 
a great convulsive leap. The bull fell upon his 
side and in his struggles attempted to swim across 
the narrow arm of the pond which would make 
it very difficult to get at him. Another shot and 
the white horns sank beneath the water. As I 
stood there waiting for Sam to come up, a cow 
moose came wading down on the opposite shore 
and stayed about watching us until we went 
back to camp. 

There was our game, floating about twenty 
feet out in the water, and the next question was 
to get it ashore, no slight task for two pairs of 
hands, but before undertaking that we signalled 
the camp of our good luck, and the two shots 
went echoing over the trees exactly an hour 
after our departure. 

There were a number of tall dead stumps stick- 
ing up here and there about the bog, and three 
of these we pushed over and brought to the shore, 
placing their ends on the back of the floating 



184 -ffn tbe 1ICloot>s an& on tbe Sbore 

moose. Sam stripped to his shirt and moccasins 
and worked his way out on this precarious plat- 
form until he was able to grasp one antler which 
still showed a little above the water. Light as 
he was his strange raft sank with him considerably, 
but by dint of much heaving and hauling he 
managed to shift the timbers from above to 
beneath the moose and float him on them near 
enough for me to lend a helping hand, and we 
finally managed to get enough of the creature 
on shore so that we could bleed him. 

The bull was neither so large an animal nor so 
dark in colour as the one which we had first seen 
and rather light built and rangy. The next 
morning when William saw him, " Ah," he said, 
" he was a fighter," which is very probably the 
reason why the first bull deemed it advantageous 
to leave when he did. The antlers were not so 
large as they had seemed when they first rose 
out of the bog, and though their spread was but 
forty-seven inches they were well palmated and 
pointed, the brow points on both sides being 
unusually long and heavy. 

These two episodes will perhaps serve to show 
the possibilities for continued intense interest 
and excitement which moose-calling can give as 




IIUMKWARU BOUND. 



XTbe ©pcntng of tbe Season 185 

compared to still hunting at a time when tracking 
the game is impossible. To my own mind the 
listening for the answer, the great stillness, the 
long period of waiting, with its hopes and fears, 
and the final great crash from the alders gave 
the better sport, even though the shot proved 
so unlucky. 




^be tTrout of tbe IRcpisiGuit 

;E broke camp on the morning of August 
thirtieth in 1899 and started up the river 
from the Grand Falls, a party of three 
of us, each in a big Mic-Mac birch canoe poled 
along by two canoemen. The supplies and 
camp equipment were stowed in a long light- 
draught scow towed by two horses, for the water 
was low and the weight had to be distributed 
more than the burden of the canoes alone would 
allow. Sturgis had made the trip once before, 
and his stories of the Nepisiguit trout were 
inducement enough for Lund and myself to join 
him on a second expedition. The river affords 
famous salmon fishing from its mouth at Bathurst 
all the way to Grand Falls, a distance of some 
twenty-two miles. There it descends from its 
higher level, a hundred feet or more, in three 
great pitches through a narrow gorge, making 
as v/iH and tumultuous a scene as I remember. 

186 



Ube Urout ot tbe IRepistauit 187 

Above the falls the whole aspect of things changes. 
The river becomes much wider and. very shallow 
under the conditions usually prevalent in the 
summer and early fall, making it necessary for 
the canoeman to take advantage of every inch 
of water in the hardly perceptible channels through 
the rounded boulders with which its bed is 
strewn. This continues until you reach the 
Narrows, a high walled gorge through which 
the river rushes over foaming ledges. This 
of course was impassable for the scow, and the 
two big horses snaked it up the steep trail between 
the carrying places, through the bushes or over 
them, making it look as if there had been a land- 
slide where it passed, while the men poled the 
canoes up through the swift water far below us. 

Above the Narrows the river continues shallow 
and swift-flowing to Allen's Rocks, where there 
is another pitch of swift water which has to be 
portaged. It is not far from there to Indian Falls, 
where there is a long carry, but beyond this the 
river becomes more narrow and deeper, though 
occasional gravel bars and shallows still make 
it necessary to pick one's way. 

We left the scow at the lower end of Allen's 
Rocks on the third day, and I was glad to see 



188 nn tbe IKHoobs an5 on tbe Sbore 

the last of it, for the sight of the horses toiHng 
through the water over the boulders and ledges 
had gotten on my nerves. They would splash 
along on the uneven bed of the river, picking 
their way with their feet among the rocks, now 
knee deep and now up to their bellies. Now 
they would scramble up a submerged ledge and 
splash into the deep pool beyond up to their necks. 
They were as willing as could be and old hands 
at it, for only the fittest could survive such labours, 
but after the wonder of seeing them do what they 
did wore off it was a distressing thing to watch 
their toiling progress. 

We kept on in the canoes to Indian Falls, and 
it was late in the afternoon when we started on 
the trail through the woods for the "52 Mile Bear 
House," where we were to camp that night, 
the guides going back to the teamster to help 
bring along the baggage. They had expected to 
make a sledge for this, but happening to find an 
old dug-out near the landing, they cut it in two, 
nailed slats across the open ends, and soon had 
two improvised drags into which they loaded our 
supplies and camp equipment, one for each horse. 
It was quite a novel bit of the mothering of 
invention by necessity. 




THE SCOW. 




LEAVING THE CARRY ABOVE THE NARROW'S. 



XTbe Urout of tbe IReptstgiiit 189 

The swift water and deep pools at the Narrows 
had looked sufficiently " fishy " to warrant a 
few casts, but with no results save a fingerling 
or two. I had tried again at several deep holes 
at the mouths of inflowing brooks with no greater 
success, and it was not until we came to the big 
pool at the foot of Indian Falls that we saw a 
trout of any size. Here I took twenty-two fish, 
but none over half a pound except one which 
weighed a pound and a half. Some of the places 
I had tried had seemed such certainties that all 
this would have been a little discouraging except 
for the assurances of my more experienced friend 
that no one ever thought of fishing in the lower 
reaches of the river and that our sport was yet 
to come. 

It was not far from our camp at the Bear House 
to the Devil's Elbow, where we were to make our 
permanent camp near the deep pool there, the 
first of a series of similar pools extending further 
up the river where the real fishing was to be had. 
We loaded the canoes with as many of our be- 
longings as we should need to establish our new 
camp, and started off, my canoe somewhat in the 
lead, as Hughy and Ned were about the best 
team on the river. 



190 -ffn tbe MooDs anb on tbe Sbore 

As we went along we passed deep holes and 
swift eddies which were tempting enough, but 
I had made up my mind to wait for the ap- 
pointed time and place and passed them by. 
Subsequent experience proved that this was just 
as well, for I never found fish of any size or in 
any number below the Elbow, and this although 
the conditions there for quite a distance down 
the stream would seem to be fully as attractive 
to the trout as those of the pools above. 

We had just gained the still water at the head 
of a rapid up which the men had literally jumped 
the canoe, and turned the wooded point into the 
lower end of a deep still pool about sixty yards 
long. 

" This is the Elbow," said Hughy, " now for 
'em!" 

It was then about eleven o'clock in the morning 
and the bright sun struck fairly upon the water 
so that the conditions were none too favourable, 
but we managed to swing the canoe into a position 
Vv'here we should throw no shadow, with a good 
chance behind me for the back cast, and I soon 
had my flies in the water. The men held the 
canoe steady with their poles thrust into the 
sloping bottom of the pool, while I lengthened 




COMING UP THK NARROWS. 



xrbe TTrout ot tbe iReplstauit i9i 

my cast out over the deeper water. I was using a 
brown hackle for my dropper and a Parma- 
cheenee Belle for my tail fly, and had hardly 
gained my full length of line before the Parma- 
cheenee was taken with a splash as it struck the 
surface. The fish hooked itself and I coiild tell 
by the impact of its strike that it was a good one. 
Out went the line with a rush while the reel sang 
joyously. This was what I had come for! I 
gained a little line and then off went the fish 
again to more music of the reel. It seemed to 
scream as it gave up its line. Then the fish 
turned and came back again, sounding to the 
bottom at the deepest part of the pool, immovable 
to the lift of the light rod, bent to a semicircle 
with tip at the surface of the water, while he 
tugged like a bulldog at the thing which held 
him fast. Then he was off again in another wild 
dash, but his strength was going, and reeling in 
as his rushes lost their power, it was not long 
before I had him on a shortened line where I 
could see the redness of his fins as he swam about, 
still fighting, in the clear water below us. It was 
some little time even then before he was ready 
for the net, but after one unsuccessful attempt 
when I thought he was surely gone, Hughy 



192 nn tbe TlCloobs auD on tbe Sbore 

lifted him gasping into the canoe and the fight 
was over. It was the biggest trout that I had 
ever caught, three pounds and a quarter in 
weight, and beautifully marked and tinted. The 
" moreness " which fishermen all know, even 
after such a prize, was stronger than ever with 
such a beginning, and after a few casts I struck 
another fish which fought like a hero, as had the 
first one. This one weighed an even two pounds. 
The line was hardly out again before the brown 
hackle was taken and another fine trout only a 
little smaller than the second came to the net. 
Sturgis's canoe came around the corner just then 
and took position farther up the pool. After a few 
casts he was fast to a splendid fish, which turned 
out to weigh exactly the same as my first one. 
I took two more, each weighing about a pound, 
and as what we had was plenty for our dinner, 
we stopped with these and poled the few rods to 
the landing at our camp ground. They were 
the finest trout I had ever seen in ever3rthing 
that makes a trout admirable, condition, mark- 
ings and colouring, rather more silvery in general 
tone than the trout I had caught in other waters, 
and every one of them a fighter in his class. On 
the table they were delicious, fresh from the 



SlnUt^ . 



H / / 



u/e a/ iiic/<j4}. 



-^ 




(^ 




MAP OF NEPISIGUIT RIVER — EASTERN SECTIOX. 



Zbc Urout or tbe IRepisiauit 193 

water as they were, the flesh varying from white 
in one to salmon pink in another, but all quite 
free from the muddy taste which so often pre- 
vents a trout from being the delicacy it is always 
assumed to be. 

Late in the afternoon, when the shadows 
of the trees had darkened the waters of the pool, 
I dropped down the river in one of the canoes 
and drifted with the current, casting ahead as 
I floated along. The flies had rested on the water 
for an instant when there was a double splash 
and a pair of gladiators had them. Then my 
hands were full enough! It was impossible to 
guide the canoe and handle the rod at the same 
time, but by good luck I drifted on a gravel bar 
at one side of the pool instead of keeping down 
the rapid, and there I had it out with them. As 
often happens the pair of fish fought against each 
other, so that the contest was not so hard a one 
as either fish could probably have put up alone, 
but the problem of netting them, weary as they 
were, was a serious one. By a second bit of good 
luck Sturgis had seen fit to follow my example 
and take a few casts, and had come down into the 
pool in another canoe with one of the guides. 
They arrived alongside in answer to my call for 



194 Un tbe 'Cmoobs an& on tbe Sbore 

help just in the nick of time, and as I lifted the 
two tired fish over my friend's landing net he 
gathered them in one after the other and in a 
moment they were safely in my canoe. The pair 
weighed three pounds and a half and two pounds 
and a half respectively. I did not wish to risk 
an anti-climax by further effort of mine, and 
after watching Sturgis take three or four smaller 
fish we poled back to camp to smoke our pipes 
and gloat over our good luck. 

The next day was cloudy and rather windy, 
a much more favourable state of things for fish- 
ing than the bright sunshine of the day before. 
It was Sturgis's day! He took three splendid fish, 
one weighing four pounds, the other two each 
weighing three pounds and three-quarters. I 
took four fish, three and a quarter, two, one and 
three-quarters and one and one-quarter. Lund's 
largest of six fish weighed three pounds, his others 
all a pound or over. We could probably have 
caught three times as many right there at the 
Elbow pool if we had made a day of it, but we 
limited ourselves to taking no more fish than we 
could use, and as our luck came jumping at us 
with the first cast, the sport was fast and furious 
while it lasted but soon over. 




ABOVE THE ELBOW. 




LYMAN S HOLE. 



XTbe Urout ot tbe Bepisiauit 195 

In those days the hunting season opened on the 
first of September, and as we were all eager to 
get our game we separated the next morning, 
each man with his own guides, headed for dis- 
tricts with which they were most familiar. My 
destination was Lake Upsalquitch, and as we 
were to travel by the river as far as Portage 
Brook, I took my rod along to try the fishing in 
the upper pools on the way. The first of these 
above the Elbow is Lyman's Hole, about four 
miles up the river. This is neither so large nor 
so deep as the Elbow pool. The river makes a 
sharp angle just at the upper end of it, losing 
part of its swiftness in a bogan before turning 
into the pool, but the current is much swifter 
than at the Elbow even then. We kept in close 
to the left hand bank of the river until we were 
about opposite the centre of the pool, within 
fair casting distance of any part of it. The men 
held the canoe with their poles, and a few casts 
gave me line enough to carry the flies to the upper 
end of the pool, just at the edge of the swift 
water running through the middle of it. They 
had floated down a yard or two when a broad 
gleaming back rose a little above the surface, 
and as it disappeared in an oily swirl, I felt a 



196 l[n tbe Moobs an^ on tbe Sbore 

strike which came up the Hne and down the rod 
to my wrist Hke a blow. The fish started up 
stream at first, but the tension was apparently 
too much for him and he turned, going by me 
in the swift current like a flash. Out went the 
line imtil it looked as if we might have to up 
moorings and go after the runaway in the canoe, 
for there was no holding him in the quick water, 
but finally he turned up-stream again, keeping 
in the more quiet water on the farther side of the 
current. I regained my line as he came on, and 
was drawing him slowly across the swift water 
to my side of the river w^hen there was a great 
tug on the line. For a moment I thought I had 
struck some snag or rock and lost my fish, but the 
next instant the reel was screeching like a sea- 
gull with twenty yards of line run off and more 
going. It seemed as if the fish had gained re- 
doubled strength in its rest after the first roimd, 
for it was fighting harder than ever, and again it 
seemed probable that we should have to cast off 
and follow it in the canoe. Just as in its other 
long rush, the fish turned up stream as it reached 
the lower end of the pool, and followed along the 
edge of the swift water, tugging hard at the line 
continuously but making no long runs. Finally 



Ube XTrout of tbe IRepistguit 197 

I had him directly across the current from me, 
and after holding him there awhile put the 
pressure on to bring him to my side of the river. 
He came very slowly, making an occasional short 
rush down stream, but the force of the water and 
the constant tension of the rod had slowed him 
down considerably and I soon had my fish where 
I could see he was a splendid one, bigger than 
anything I had caught yet. He had taken 
the dropper fly and I was watching him with no 
eyes for aught else as he swam about in the clear 
water, hither and thither now, as the little rod 
willed. Hughy was ready with the net, but as 
I began to lift the fish I noticed that the leader 
stretching off below him seemed unusually 
taut. 

" There's two of 'em," shouted Hughy from 
the stern, and a sudden rush w^hich obviously 
was not caused by the fish which I could see proved 
that it must be so. The unfortunate trout in the 
middle of the revived struggle was jerked here 
and there by the more active fish below, but 
materially assisting by its very inertia in its 
eventual undoing. Hughy netted the uppermost 
fish first, leaving the other swimming free while 
he disengaged the hook, a ticklish undertaking 



198 ifn tbc TKHoo^s rm^ on tbe Sbore 

ordinarily, but both fish were so nearly all in that 
it seemed safe to take the chance. 

The first trout was the larger of the two and 
had been the first to take the fly. He weighed 
a strong five pounds. The second fish was a three 
pounder to the ounce and had taken the tail fly 
under water at the moment when the first one had 
seemed to come to again with such wonderful 
recuperative powers. Neither fish was hooked 
badly, and as we did not actually need them I 
wished to let them go again if the struggle had 
not been too much for them. There was a little 
pool in the rocks between the canoe and the shore, 
and we put them in there to see what they might 
do. They had been much exhausted, particularly 
the larger fish, as he had been on the line the 
longest, and for a while they lay there on their 
sides with very little sign of life, but in about ten 
minutes they had made so good a recovery that 
there was no doubt but that they were as well as 
ever. This was most satisfactory and seemed 
to warrant a few more casts, which landed three 
fish, two of two pounds each, the other a little 
short of that. Lyman's Hole had justified its 
reputation, and after giving our two captives 
their liberty we moved on up the river. 



Ube ^roiit of tbe IRepfslouit 199 

The sun was high when we arrived at Governor's 
Hole about two miles further on our way, but it 
seemed to make no difference with the trout. 
There was a swift current through the middle 
of the pool, and the fish seemed to lie in the more 
quiet water just at the edge of it. At my first 
cast, with hardly twenty feet of line beyond my 
tip, half a dozen leaping trout rose clear of the 
water to the flies, two of them striking as they 
came down upon them head first. They were 
a well-matched pair, each weighing an even two 
pounds, and after weighing them we put them 
back again none the worse for their somewhat 
rude treatment. At the next cast the Par- 
macheenee was taken under water as it drifted 
along down the current, but the glimpse of a 
broad tail which showed under the surface for 
a moment showed that this fish was a big one. 
He fought gamely, now tacking his way up against 
the swift current, tugging at the line, now turning 
down stream in a vicious rush that would take 
off all the line I had regained in less time than it 
takes to tell it. Here, as in the lower pools, the 
fish seemed to hesitate to go out of the deeper 
water, and always turned on their rushes down 
the stream as they came to the shallower places 



200 irn tbe Moobs an^ on tbe Sborc 

at the lower end, or it would have been quite 
impossible to bring several of them to the net 
without following them in the canoe. 

I do not remember how many trips up and down 
the pool the broad-tailed one took before I could 
lift him to the net, but it was a good many. 
Hughy finally lifted him inboard and the scales 
showed he weighed four pounds strong, fully as 
long a fish as the heavier one in the lower pool, 
but with less depth and thickness, a regular racer 
of a trout. The sport kept on with a strike at 
almost every cast until I had taken ten fish in all, 
one of three pounds, two two and a half pounders, 
the others ranging from one and a half pounds 
to three-quarters of a pound for the smallest one. 
They all went back into the river apparently as 
well as ever, none of them having been severely 
hooked. Such large hard-striking fish rarely are, 
according to my experience, the fly generally 
lodging in the front or corners of their capacious 
mouths where the tissues are almost bloodless 
and the wound consequently of the slightest. 

As we kept on up-stream I busied myself with 
carving the weights of the different fish on the 
sides of a pine stick, which was the best I could do 
as I had no pencil or paper, though I felt that such 



Zhc Urout of tbe iRepisfguit 201 

records were worthy of enduring stone. They 
were transcribed to my diary on my return, but 
the pine stick still has its place of honour among 
the archives. 

There w^ere some fine pools near the Blue 
Ledge, a short distance further on, much more 
promising in appearance than either of the two 
I had already fished that day, but the pine stick 
shows only a two-pounder and one of a little over 
a pound from their depths. We kept these and 
at the mouth of Portage Brook I took two more 
fish to add to my supplies for the trip in to the 
lake, two of two pounds each and two smaller 
ones, but both over a poimd. 

That was as far as we were to go on the river, 
as the trail we were to follow started in beside 
the brook, but it was enough, and I took the little 
rod apart, knowing that I had had a morning of 
such fishing as I had never supposed could be 
had anywhere. 

We were away in the woods for two days, but 
without luck, and on the third day started back 
to camp again. I took three fish on the way down 
the river, thinking they might be useful at the 
home camp, a hard fighter at the mouth of the 
brook which took out more line than any fish I had 



202 irn tbe 'Caioo&s an& on tbe Sbore 

hooked, though he weighed a little under three 
pounds, and the other two weighing two pounds 
and a little less respectively. This bit of foraging 
proved to have been very good judgment on my 
part, as I found that both of my friends were still 
off on the hills, and as we had not yet killed any 
game the cupboard was bare enough. 

Sturgis returned the next morning and in the 
evening we took the canoe and floated down to 
the Elbow pool to take a fish or two for our 
breakfast. We took turns at casting, and soon 
had two good fish, one of three pounds and the 
other of two. That was enough and we were on 
the point of turning up stream when a great fin 
appeared above the gleam of the dark surface 
of the water. Then a broad back rolled up lazily 
above it and disappeared again, just as one some- 
times sees a porpoise playing on the summer sea. 
Amid those confined surroundings and in the 
dim light it looked more like a whale. I cast into 
the swirl that was still eddying where the fish had 
disappeared and the next instant the fish struck. 
He was well hooked and went up the pool like an 
express train. I gave him all the line he wanted, for 
I felt sure that he would not leave the deep water, 
and I was prepared to take whatever time was 



XTbe xrrout of tbe IRepisiauit 203 

necessary to land him if I stayed there all night. 
In due time his rushes became less frequent and 
he was finally no more than twenty feet away from 
the canoe when he sounded to the bottom. The 
tip of the rod was bent to the water as the fish 
held to the bottom, and after a few minutes of 
this I tried to lift him. It was quite impossible. 
The rod bent still further to the added strain, 
but there was not a movement from the fish. I 
tried this several times with the same lack of 
result, and each time the line pulled straight up 
and down without a responsive tug or wriggle 
from the other end. I knew there were some 
snags in that part of the pool and feared that my 
disengaged fly had caught on one of them. The 
chances were all against me if it had, as the first 
rush of such a heavy fish against the unyielding 
point would be certain to break the leader. On 
the other hand, if the fish were merely sulking it 
was advisable to start him, which would also 
settle the question of snag or sulk in short order. 
I asked Sturgis to drop the canoe down a few feet 
and put his pole down as near my line as he could 
without danger of fouling it. As he did so the 
tension on the rod relaxed in an instant. I reeled 
in as fast as I could, but it was not fast enough 



204 nn tbe "QXIloot^s auD on tbe Sbore 

to take up the slack. I had no idea whether the 
fish were on or off, but I kept on reeHng in. The 
Hne was still slack when the water broke with a 
tremendous splash not a foot from the canoe 
and I caught another glimpse of a broad back and 
a fan-like tail as a parted leader and my dropper 
fly snapped back into my face. It was hard luck 
and possibly a little bad management too, though 
even if I had waited for him to start off again of 
his own accord he might have made the same 
desperate charge at the enemy with the same 
result. It has been written that " the biggest 
fish I ever caught was the one that got away," 
and so it was that evening. I do not know how 
much he weighed, but I have always felt that 
calling him half again the size of the five pounder 
would not have been an excessive estimate from 
what I had seen of him. 

We spent most of our time hunting away from 
the home camp after this and only fished enough 
to lend occasional variety to our table when we 
were there. A few days after the fight with the 
big trout I went up to Lyman's Hole again early 
in the evening, intending to take a few fish and 
drift down the river on the chance of a shot on the 
way, when the clicking poles would not give fore- 



Zbc Ztoixt ot the IRepisiautt 205 

warning of our coming. At the first cast I struck 
a heavy fish that fought away with seemingly 
untiring strength. A dozen times I almost had 
him within netting distance when off he would 
go again as strong as ever. There was no turning 
him and there was no holding him, and all one 
could do w^as to give him his own sweet will and 
take in line whenever opportunity offered. It 
was after sunset when I had hooked the fish and 
in those hills and forests the light goes quickly. 
Soon it w^as so dark that I could not see the line 
as it hissed through the water on still another 
rush of that tireless fish. Then it became so 
dark that we could not see much of anything and 
that sleepless trout still held us fast. Something 
had to be done about it, make or break. Hughy 
went ashore and made a torch from a roll of birch 
bark from a convenient tree, and holding it flaring 
above his head, waded out into the stream. I 
put the pressure on the fish and turned him sharply 
into the current and across it, keeping him com- 
ing with a steady pull until I could see him in 
the glare reflected on the water. Perhaps the 
light had something to do with it, but at all events 
he was soon over the net, and as Hughy lifted 
him out the fly dropped from a loop of skin on the 



206 lln tbe TKHooDs ant) on tbe Sbore 

fish's side just back of the gills. This made it 
clear how the trout had been able to put up the 
fight he had, and also that we had taken him in 
out of the wet just about in time. Hughy had 
kept track of the struggle with his watch as nearly 
as he could after its beginning, and declared that 
the fish had been on the line at least forty minutes. 
At all events it had been long enough to spoil all 
chances for a shot, as it was then so dark it would 
have been impossible to shoot with any accuracy, 
so we hurried back to camp with our one fish as 
our trophy. It weighed four pounds and a quarter 
the next morning. 

This was the last big fish I took and it was a 
sporting finish. Sturgis took a few more ranging 
between two and three and a half pounds, but 
we gave but little time to the trout with the call- 
ing season on and the bears in the blueberries. We 
noticed that the run of the fish was smaller as 
the time went on, and our guides told us that 
such was always the case. According to them, 
and their statements have been fully corroborated, 
the fish come down the river from the lake at its 
source with the spring high water, staying in the 
pools during the summer and making their way 
back again to the lake before the ice comes. 



Ube Urout of tbe Beptsiguit; 207 

The four pools, the Elbow, Lyman's Hole, 
Governor's Hole and Portage Brook, seemed to 
be the only pools to which they resorted, although 
there were many more of seemingly equal attrac- 
tion both below and above that stretch of the 
river within which these pools lie. At those four 
places one could have fished day in and day out 
that September with scores which my experience 
will perhaps suggest. 

Concentrated as the fish seemed to be, I greatly 
feared that some day some one would come and 
do just that, and so it seems to have happened, 
for early in September in 1906 I cast my flies over 
the three lower pools again one day without rais- 
ing a fish that weighed over half a pound and only 
one as large as that. The little things that came 
to my flies now and then would have been eaten 
alive by the old time denizens of the pools. We 
did see the charcoaled outlines of two good fish 
nailed to a tree at Lyman's Hole which had been 
caught some three weeks before. As my memory 
serves me one of them weighed four pounds, 
the other in the neighbourhood of three, and the 
captor of the larger of the two told me afterwards 
that the pair were by far the best fish they had 
taken on their trip. 



208 Hn tbe MooJJs anD on tbe Sbore 

Our men told us that since my first visit the 
lumbermen had taken to using dynamite in 
breaking up the ice in the lake in the early spring 
and that this had undoubtedly been very inju- 
rious to the fishing in the river. It is possible that 
the fish had started up the river again a little 
earlier at this second visit, though this could not 
have accounted for such dearth of trout of any 
size in view of past experience at the same time 
of year and even later, but whatever the reasons 
may have been it made one sick at heart to see 
how my forebodings had been realized and to 
think that the glory of the trout of the Nepisiguit 
had departed. 




IBvnnt SboottnG at flDonomo^ 

|HE little town of Chatham lies right 
at the elbow of the menacing arm 
of old Cape Cod, its white houses 
clustered about at the head of the harbour, 
which cuts far in among the dunes from the bay 
on the south side of the Cape. Small as the har- 
bour is, many a staunch vessel sailed from it as 
her home port in the old days when the Cape 
Codder instinctively turned towards the sea for 
his livelihood and heaved his sea-chest on board 
the banker, whaler or packet. But all this has 
passed away, and a few Cape " cats," scallopers 
and shore fishermen, are all that go out of Chatham 
now. 

On the easterly side of the town the land falls 
away in a great bluff of earth and gravel down to 
the broad sand beach. Wide as the beach is, the* 
storms drive the sea across it right to the foot 
of the bluff, where it pounds and grinds, each 

209 



210 Un tbe TKHoo^s auD on tbe Sbore 

year encroaching farther and farther inshore. 
The ruins of two old lighthouse towers at what 
is now over the brink of the bluff show how the 
sea has evened accounts with those two guardians 
of the shore. 

This beach stretches off to the south, widening 
into marshes on the inner side at first, then narrow- 
ing again to little more than a strip of white sand 
between the ocean and the bay, and then a greater 
widening of marsh and sand dunes which con- 
tinues to its end at Monomoy Point. In former 
days there was a channel where the white sand 
now drifts about, through which vessels could 
go from the harbour out to deep water, but the 
shifting sand was making it more narrow and 
shoal each year, and a great storm in the late 
nineties put the finishing touch to it. The island 
which this channel made of all the land to the 
south of it was Monomoy island, and though now 
its benevolent assimilation has taken place, as 
is so often the fate of islands in these days, the 
long stretch of dunes and marsh still keeps the 
sonorous name, though island no longer. 

A shallow creek cuts off a not large area of the 
northern end of the dunes, and this has its own 
name of Shooters' Island. Here in the early '6o's 




THE BRANT CLUB. 



^-*A;<X^"Vi--^-- .^-i^^.^'-^^'^,^^^^^'^^^ 




THE CURTIS BAR. 



(See />age 222) 



3Brant Sbootino at /IDonomo^ 211 

the first gunning club in the country made its 
home, close by the flats and sand bars reaching 
out into the bay where the brant made their last 
stop on their way northward in the spring. 

A little group of Boston men were the first 
comers to enlist the services of the local gunners 
and build their shanty, taking title to the land 
by squatter sovereignty. After them came 
some Providence men who built another shanty 
close by, and then a club from Manchester, N. H., 
put up still a third in the same sheltering hollow 
in the dunes. The rights of all were equal of 
course, as no one had any, but it soon developed 
that the unregulated assertion of such claims 
as each group might make was contrary to its 
own and the common welfare. Out of this con- 
dition of things came the Monomoy Brant Club, 
which took title to the property of the three 
merging entities, each of which received back 
again the use of the whole of it and the exclusive 
right to shoot during its own equal share of the 
season. 

The season may be said to extend over five 
weeks on the average, beginning the last week 
in March and continuing through April. In the 
course of time the club grew to such an extent 



212 Hn tbe 'CXI100&S au& on tbe Sbore 

that there was a party for each of the five weeks, 
the three original groups keeping their own 
individuaHty until one of them disbanded a few 
years ago, when the parties were reduced to four, 
dividing the full season between them. Each 
makes its visit in turn, the last party of one year 
being the first the next season, and so on, and 
such are the uncertainties as to the arrival of the 
birds and everything pertaining to them, that one 
chance may be said to be as good as any other. 
The fact that the shooting at Monomoy is done 
in the spring may outlaw the sport to some minds. 
The only answer to such a criticism is that if it 
were not done in the spring it could not be done 
-V at all, as the line of the southern migration in the 
fall takes the birds far out to sea, except a few 
stragglers dropped by the shooters in their dories 
off Cohasset and the " South Shore." A few 
more may be shot about Nantucket, but I greatly 
doubt if the total bag of brant on the whole 
Massachusetts coast in any one fall ever amounts 
I to one hundred birds. Before the undesirability 
of indiscriminate spring shooting was generally 
recognized, a frequent argument of those in favour 
of the reform was that the stock of young birds 
would be much diminished if the mated birds 



\ 



%. 



Brant Sbooting at /IDonomo^ 213 

were killed on the way to their northern breeding 
grounds. By the same token, if the same birds 
had been killed during the fall before on their 
way south there would be an equal dearth of 
progeny. It does not seem to matter, therefore, 
whether the prospective parent bird be killed in 
the fall of one year or in the spring of the next. 
Its race is run in either case, but if the survivors 
of the fall flight be given a legislative immunity 
bath, as the current phrase has it, on their return 
in the spring, the birds run the gaimtlet but once 
instead of twice, with corresponding benefit to 
future generations, both of birds and men. Once 
down the firing line is enough, and if it be but once 
it does not matter whether the course of the fowl 
be north or south, and it happens to be north at 
Monomoy during the short time the brant are 
there at all. 

The brant is the brenta hernicula of the Atlantic 
coast, both of North America and Europe, a 
sub-family of the goose species, and common as 
they are, their history, both natural and tem- 
poral, is unique. The derivation of their common 
name is given in the books with little assertiveness 
of authority as the Greek word " Brenthus," 
meaning " an unknown bird." In the sixteenth 



214 ifn tbe Moobs an& on tbe Sbore 

century its present scientific name was established, 
though the meaning of " brenta " was still ob- 
scure, but since then given as meaning the 
" burnt " goose, from the brownish tinges of its 
plumage. It is only in comoaratively recent years 
that the nests of even the rear guard of the north- 
boimd flocks have been discovered, far beyond the 
Arctic Circle, and even at 82° the brant have been 
observed still flying northward. It can easily 
be understood, therefore, when the North Pole 
was as yet imsought and when science was little 
more than legend and superstition, nothing should 
be known of the breeding habits of the brant. 
The logicians of those times argued that as no 
eggs of the brant had ever been seen, they did not 
exist, and therefore that the brant did not lay 
eggs and come from eggs like other fowl, but 
marvellous to say, sprang from the barnacles 
growing on the floating drift and sea-wrack. 
This legend survives in the word " bemicula." 
It would almost seem that there was some method 
in such scientific madness from the practical way 
in which this theory was applied, for the Church 
declared that as the fat, well flavoured fowl were 
sprung from barnacles, they were therefore fish 
and could be eaten in Lent! 



3Brant Sbootlng at /iDonomoi? 215 

My first visit to Chatham was in early April 
in 1885, when another youngster and I were given 
the necessary permission and wherewithal by 
our parents to spend part of our spring vacation 
there. Every variety of shore-bird or wild fowl 
which we had read about in our bird books seemed 
to have been shot at Chatham, and still another 
boy, a little older than we were, had told us of 
the shooting he had had at the Brant Club, where 
he had been a guest. Such fortune was not for 
us, but to Chatham we must go none the less^ 
In those days the home-coming and the down- 
going shooting parties dined together on the day 
of the shift at the house near the harbour at 
which we were to stay, and the piles of fine birds 
in the door yard when we arrived, mostly brant, 
with black ducks, a goose or two, r.nd some 
eiders in among them, made it seem as if we had 
arrived at the appointed spot. So we had, on the 
door-step, and that was as far as we were to get, 
as we soon learned. We had no shooting and cut 
our visit short, but I shall never forget my first 
impression of Monomoy as we sailed out of the 
harbour at sunrise that next morning. The 
water was quite calm and loons and other divers 
were swiming about almost at our moorings, dis- 



216 iFn tbe Moobs anb on tbe Sbore 

appearing silently with scarcely a ripple of the 
surface as our catboat bore down upon them. 
As we rounded the sandy point at the mouth 
of the harbour, flock after flock of sheldrakes 
rose up, the males gorgeous in their mating 
costume. Little bunches of coots of different 
kinds skimmed along close to the water, and as we 
got out into the open bay the incessant gabble 
of the old-squaws sounded in every direction. 
Soon we came upon a flock of brant, which rose 
almost within shot and swung in tow^ards one of 
the shooting boxes on the flats. We watched 
the birds as they went to the decoys, and the 
heavy reports told us that we had done a good 
turn to those favoured mortals in the box. Flock 
after flock rose before us as we sailed along, and 
when the sun finally came up over the dunes to 
the eastward, the rosy sky was dotted with flying 
fowl wherever one might look, while the air was 
resonant with their cries. 

Long waving lines of eiders began coming up the 
bay with the southerly wind, the drakes looking 
like huge bumble-bees in their motley plumage. 
Far down the bay we disturbed a great body of 
brant bedded in the deep water, and the roar of 
their wings and the tumult of their cries when 



Brant Sbooting in /iDonomo^ 217 

they rose was an experience in itself. But what 
we saw that morning made it clear that, however 
many birds there might be in the bay, there were 
none for us, nor for any one except those of the 
elect in the boxes on the flats of Monomoy. 

" All things come to him who will but wait " — 
sometimes. Six years later I had the opportunity 
to join a party which was given the privileges 
of the club for a week in March before the opening 
of the regular season, and then it was that I first 
met the " local members," the Bearse " boys," 
" Washy," patriarchal and gentle, George, grizzled 
and jovial, and Fernando, silent but cheery, 
and so uncomplaining of the misfortune that 
crippled him. Then it was that I heard the tales 
of the doings of " Veenie " and 'Lonzo Nye, 
veterans of the past in the warfare with the brant, 
and read the records of the olden times in the big 
leather covered volumes, now dating back nearly 
fifty years. Flatfish, pitchforked on the flats 
at high tide, were fried for us with flavour in- 
describable. Quahaug pies were baked for us and 
hard clam chowders blended. Coots were stewed 
with many onions. Black ducks and eiders were 
roasted to a turn. We were introduced to hot 
buttered rum, the country's wine, warranted 



218 nn tbe Woo^s anb on tbe Sbore 

to start a glow in the coldest toes. These for the 
body, and for the mind tales of the sea and shore, 
of shipwreck and of salvage, and with this much 
of sport and of bird lore, and tales of quaint 
comedy of the town. We had everything except 
brant shooting, but the ice was still on the flats, 
making a barrier at the edge of the channel over 
which the brant would not fly. As " Washy " 
said, " It might as well be fire; they'd come over 
it just as quick." 

We shot ducks on the marsh and a few from 
the boxes, but not a single brant, though there 
were hundreds of them bedded in the bay. We 
could, however, get an understanding of the ways 
and means of " branting " as the sport is carried 
on at Monomoy, even better perhaps than later 
in the season, as the men were still engaged on the 
preliminary work of setting out the boxes and 
decoys. 

These boxes are made out of heavy plank, 
long enough to allow three men to sit side by side 
in them without too much crowding, and high 
enough to come about to the level of a man's 
eyes as he sits on the long broad seat fastened 
about a foot and a half above the flooring. Strong 
posts at each comer of the box on the outside 



Brant Sbooting at /IDonomop 219 

of the bottom serve as a foundation when sunk 
their length in the wet sand, which is then piled 
up around the box until a kite-shaped bar has 
been constructed with the box in the widest part 
of it, the narrow part dropping away in front. 
In the old days the bar was completed when this 
was done, only to be repaired again and again, 
as each tide washed away the shifting sand, so 
that the work was interminable. Of late years 
it has been the h^bit to cover the sand bar thus 
made with a heavy canvas tightly fitted over the 
sand around the rim of the box and buried deep 
in the fiats at the outer edges. This keeps the 
sand in place, and the box thus equipped will last 
out the season ordinarily, barring some exception- 
ally heavy storm. These canvases are not used 
at the two southerly boxes as the water is not 
so deep there and the sand consequently subject 
to less violent attack, except at the highest tides. 
An odd result of the adoption of the canvas 
bars proved to be that it was soon discovered 
that it was impossible to use the live decoys on 
them. The birds could get no foothold on the 
hard smooth surface of the canvas, and were 
blown about over it at the end of their tethers 
greatly to their distress, causing them to utter 



'i- 



220 irn tbe Moobs ant) on tbe Sbore 

anything but seductive calls to the passing flocks. 
The live decoys are still taken to the two southerly 
boxes occasionally, though each has its own flock 
of wooden decoys anchored before it, and if a 
choice had to be made between the live birds 
and their painted prototypes, the latter would 
be given the preference, for experience has 
demonstrated that the wild birds find a large body 
of wooden decoys more attractive than the two 
or three live brant tethered on the bar in the old- 
time manner. 

As a general thing it will be found that a larger 
company of fowl, brant or other varieties, will 
not decoy to a smaller number. I do not mean 
to suggest that there is any mathematical ac- 
curacy about this, for a flock of a dozen fowl 
will often come to half a dozen decoys, but the 
larger flocks of twenty to fifty or more rarely will, 
even if they see them, but pass on, hailing them 
w^ith invitations to join their heavier ranks. It 
would seem to be but another application of the 
principle that the greater body will attract the 
lesser. 

It takes nearly a thousand wooden decoys to 
rig the five boxes, each " set " having about two 
hundred. Three decoys are fastened to the corners 



Brant Sbooting at /iDonomo^ 221 

of the strong wooden triangles which are anchored 
about in front of the boxes, where they are left 
through the season, as it would be impossible to 
take up such a number after the day's shooting 
and set them again for the next. This has its 
undesirable side, for the birds become used to 
the decoys and sheer away from them after a few 
experiences of cold-shouldered unresponsiveness 
from the wooden ones, or of the too warm welcome 
of the guns if the branters are in the boxes, but 
fortunately a bit of rough weather seems to dis- 
sipate their education for the time being. At 
such times their past familiarity with the decoys 
seems to make little difference, and they come 
to the painted wooden breasts as to the arms of 
long lost brothers. 

The five boxes are placed as near the deep water 
as they can be with due regard to their nearness 
to each other, and the farthest postponement 
of the evil moment of being flooded with the 
rising tide. There are natural sand bars here and 
there all about the flats, rising a little above 
the general level of the broad expanse, and the 
boxes are set out on the most available of these, 
thus gaining the few inches of elevation which 
at times will make all the difference between 



222 nn tbe Moobs ant) on tbe Sbore 

being able to lie in the box during the top of the 
tide, when the shooting will probably be the best, 
and standing on the edge of it in the wind and 
water for two mortal hours waiting for the tide 
to go down again. 

Beginning at the lower end of the line is the 
" South bar," nearest of all to the shanties and 
only a short distance out from the border of the 
marsh. Here Fernando watched and waited, 
and not in vain either, for the silent little man was 
a splendid shot with his ten -gauge. 

Next to the north comes the " Mud Hole," 
close to a deep indentation in the flats which 
gives the box its name. George tended this box 
during the years of my visit, and kept on there 
until increasing infirmities put an end to his 
following the brant at all. Before the old channel 
through the beach filled up, the " Gravelly " 
bar on its edge was an established location, but 
this had to be given up owing to the changed 
conditions, and the box was shifted to the " West 
bar " far out on the western edge of the flats. 
This box was " Washy 's " abiding-place, and like 
the next two on the line, at the " North " and 
" Curtis " bars, is canvas covered, as the water 
is deep and the waves sometimes high at these 
outposts. 



Brant Sbooting at /IDonomoi? 223 

The " North bar " was tended by George's 
stalwart son Russell, strong as a young moose and 
an excellent shot. The " Curtis bar " only came 
under the jurisdiction of the Brant Club in recent 
years. Before that the then captain of the life- 
saving station held the location until he lost his 
job on the beach. Then he joined forces with 
the branters as a " local member," but left them 
and the Cape after a season or two and never came 
back again. His squatter title to the bar was 
absorbed by the Club and his enterprising young 
nephew " Natty " tended the box there by right 
of inheritance. 

It takes about two weeks to do all the pre- 
liminary w^ork, for it can be undertaken only at 
low tide. Sometimes a sudden storm will level 
an unfinished bar to the flats again, or a canvas 
will wash out, bringing collapse to the whole 
unstable structure beneath it, but the " local 
members " of the Club regard these vexations 
as merely a part of the day's work, and by the 
time the first party is due everything will be 
ship-shape and in readiness. 

So were the boxes made and manned when I 
had my first opportunity to go to the Club during 
the shooting season. We left Boston on the 5th 



224 Hn tbe MOO&S anD on tbe Sbote 

of April in a snow-storm, for the spring was late 
in coming. The ground was white when we 
arrived at Chatham, where we had dinner with 
the returning party, whose big bunches of fine 
birds lent additional fervour to our normal en- 
thusiasm. We changed into our heavy shooting 
clothes, rubber boots and oilers, and were soon 
aboard Captain Bill Bloomer's catboat headed 
down the bay for Monomoy. It was cold and 
bleak, and as a big flask was on its round it was 
handed to the Captain, a rugged veteran of seventy, 
over six feet in his hip boots and with hands like 
hams. As we afterwards heard it said of him, 
" When Bill Bloomer was a young man he could 
lick his weight in wild-cats." The Captain did 
ample justice to the brand and wiped his bearded 
lips with a huge mitten. 

" In the old days," he said reflectively, " you 
couldn't go into a dinin'-room in Chat-ham but 
what you'd see a bottle of old New England rum 
a-settin' on the table." 

Then he sighed and was silent for a moment, 
adding, " You don't see that nowadays." 

As the memories of former times became more 
vivid in this line of thought the Captain spoke 
again. 



IBrant Sbooting at ^onomo^ 225 

" My grandsire used to say that before he went 
a-gunnin' he wanted just enough of that old New 
England rum so't when he put his gun up he'd 
see a blur about the size o' one of them old half- 
dollars right over the muzzle of his gun; and 
my grandsire used to say that when he see a bird 
fly into that blur he knew he had him." 

This seemed to warrant a toast to the memory 
of that worthy ancestor, which soon inspired the 
Captain to relate one of the old chap's adventures 
as he had heard it in his boyhood. 

" There was some whistlers in the river and my 
grandsire built a blind down on the point and sot 
there waitin' for 'em to come out. The whistlers 
was up the river from the blind and swimmin' 
down as nice as could be when an old gray gull 
come floppin' along up the river. He seen the 
blind and my grandsire a-settin' in it and he let 
off a screech. * Here he is, here he is,' said the 
old gray gull, and the whistlers riz and flew off 
and he didn't get no shot. The next day he tried 
it again, and just as the whistlers had swum 
almost within shot, along came the old gray gull 
again, and the old gray gull he let off another 
screech,' Here he is, here he is,' and the whistlers 
riz and flew off and he didn't get no shot. Then 



226 Hn tbe 7KI100&S an& on tbe Sbore 

my grandsire decided that before he could get the 
whistlers he'd have to get the old gray gull, so 
he built two other blinds along the river and went 
back the next day and waited for him. By-m-by 
he seen the old gray gull come floppin' up from 
the bay, an' the old gray gull he seen the first 
blind and he stopped and horvered and looked 
down in the blind and didn't see nothin' an' he 
let off a screech. ' Ain't here, ain't here,' says he, 
an' he come down a little outen the air. Then 
he seen the second blind, an' the old gray gull he 
stopped an' horvered an' looked down into the 
blind an' didn't see nothin' an' he let off another 
screech. ' Ain't here, ain't here,' says he, an' he 
come down a little more outen the air. Then the 
old gray gull seen the third blind an' stopped an' 
horvered an' looked down into the blind, an' 
then my grandsire laid it acrost him, an' the old 
gray gull let out a screech, ' Oh, hell,' an' that 
was the end o' him. An' a little later the whistlers 
come a-swimmin' down the river an' my grandsire 
bagged six on 'em." 

We put up a good many flocks of brant as we 
sailed down the bay, and as we waded ashore at 
the Mud Hole we saw what looked like a brant 
sitting on the bar close up by the box. The tide 



Brant Sfjootina at /iDonomop 227 

was low so that there was no one in the box, 
and if the bird was to be bagged one of us must 
do it. My gun case was the easiest to get at, and 
I soon had the piece put together and loaded. 
The bird jumped about forty yards away and 
the next moment I had shot the smallest and 
thinnest brant I had ever seen. Its flight was 
strong and it seemed healthy enough except for 
its thinness, and what it was doing up there on 
top of the bar was rather a mystery to every one. 
A few days later some gunners from another club 
called on us and told of the loss of one of their 
tame decoys which had escaped in some way. 
For some reason this made things seem clearer 
to us, though the fate of their bird is still probably 
as much of a mystery to them as ever. 

That night we drew for the boxes, two to each 
box, each pair to move up the line on successive 
days from the box thus drawn, and then down 
to the lower end again. My pair drew the Curtis 
box for the first day, and though this is usually 
regarded as giving the best chance, we had no 
shooting, flock after flock sheering off from the 
decoys just out of gunshot. In addition to this 
hard luck, the tide drove us out, making it neces- 
sary for us to stand there on the box until we 



228 Hn tbe TKI100&S an^ on tbe Sbore 

could bail the box out again, which was cold 
and dreary enough. It is a long tramp to the 
" Curtis bar " and back, a mile and three-quarters 
or more each way, with deep wading a good part 
of the distance either going out or coming home, 
this depending on whether you are to start in on 
the ebb or the flow of the tide, and though its 
prestige is or used to be the highest, I have always 
thought that one could pay a little too dear for 
one's whistle at the " Curtis " since my first 
experience there. 

A revised allotment sent us to the " West bar " 
with " Washy " the next day. There was not 
much doing, as the wind all died away after we 
had been out a short time. This kept the waves 
down, however, and enabled us to stay in the box 
through the flood to the ebb. We had four birds, 
two singles, which my companion and I dropped 
in turn, and a pair which fell out of a small flock 
at the joint salute of " Washy 's " gun and mine. 
It looked as if this was all that was coming to us, 
as what flight there had been had stopped entirely. 
We could not go ashore as the tide was at its 
highest and the water too deep for wading, so 
my friend and I dozed over our pipes, leaving 
" Washy " to keep lookout. 



Brant Sbootino at /IDonomoi? 229 

" Keep down and look over that corner of the 
box," he finally said. As we did so we saw half 
a dozen brant swimming up within forty yards 
of us almost on the level with our eyes, such 
was the height of the tide, with fifty or more 
following after them. There were no thoughts 
of dozing after this sight. It looked as if an old 
time " big shot " was almost certain, for shooting 
at birds in the water is not only good form but 
practically obligatory at Monomoy, owing to 
certain customs as to the division of the game 
between the visitors and the " local members." 

" Lay over when I tell you and fire when I 
count three," said " Washy," and we left the 
strategy of the shot to him while we crouched 
ready for the word. At the first signal the three 
guns were levelled over the bar in front. The 
birds were about fifty yards away now, but in a 
position on our left quarter where all our guns 
would bear, which had not been the case before. 
They were not very well bunched, but there was 
a group of a dozen or more very close together 
in about the middle of the flock, and as I was the 
middle gun I covered them. They were paddling 
about and shifting their positions every instant, 
and it seemed as if the word was very slow in 



230 nn tbe MooC)s ant) on tbe Sbore 

coming. When it did come some one fired at the 
sound of it. In an instant the flock was in the air 
and in another it seemed as if half of it was 
tumbling back again. As a matter of fact we 
only dropped seven birds, all after they had 
jumped, so far as I could see, for it did not look 
as if the two barrels fired at them in the water 
had touched a feather. I have always thought 
that the trouble was that the group which I was 
covering looked equally good to the other two 
guns, and that all our fire converged on those 
few birds. 

When two or more men are occupying a box or 
blind, the only way is for each to cover his own 
part of the flock. If the shot is to be taken at 
birds in the water, the right hand man will take 
the right hand end of the flock, and so on down 
the line, each keeping out of his neighbour's 
territory. If a flock is coming in across the line 
of shot, the leading birds should be allowed to 
pass until the outside gun can bear on them, 
each of the others in the line covering his own 
relative part of the flock as best he can. 

I have always thought that shooting in com- 
pany was much less satisfactory than shooting 
alone, as in the volley firing one can never be sure 



Brant Sbootina at /IDonomo^ 231 

whether it was one's own shot that brought down 
any particular bird or not. One gun can attend 
to singles and pairs as well as two or more, and 
though a greater number of guns well handled 
will drop more birds out of a big flock, the satis- 
faction to each individual is certainly much less 
except as to the mere point of numbers. 

I have spoken of this episode at the " West 
bar " somewhat at length, as it was the only 
occasion when I have seen a large flock of brant 
swim in to the decoys. In the old days such 
occurrences were more frequent, according to the 
records, probably owing to the use of the live 
decoys roosting on the bars instead of the wooden 
ones floating in the water. According to those 
old accounts the birds would swim up and even 
land on the bars, and over forty were killed at 
one discharge from one of the boxes — the old 
" Gravelly," as I remember it, after the birds 
had bunched together the thickest. 

Our turn at the " North bar " came two morn- 
ings later. The stars were shining when we left 
the shanty and the tide was still well up on the 
marshes. We were shooting on the ebb that 
morning, which meant a long wade to the box 
just as soon as the water was low enough to allow 



232 nn tbe Moo^s an& on tbe Sbore 

us to get there at all. We had left the submerged 
marsh and were travelling slowly over the flats, 
picking our way from one guide-stick to another 
in the darkness, when my companion discovered 
that he was over his depth already. His hip- 
boots were swamped the next second, and I knew 
that my turn would come in a few yards more. 
He turned back, leaving me alone out there in the 
waste of waters, the low outline of the box still 
lost in the gloom, to wait for the tide to go down 
still further. It was very cold and very lonesome, 
and after about half an hour of it I decided to 
turn off for the " Mud Hole," which I was quite 
sure was not to be occupied that morning. I 
could see George piling up new sand around the 
box, and toiled across the flats to him as to a 
haven of refuge. It was a gray morning with 
a strong wind from the northeast. There was 
no real sunrise, but as it grew lighter flocks of 
brant began coming up from the southward. 
A flock of about thirty saw our decoys and turned 
in, coming straight for them. The leading birds 
had set their wings and were right over the decoys 
when George gave the word to fire. I was on 
the right and was holding ahead of the crowding 
leaders when I pulled the trigger. I do not know 



Brant SbootirtG at /iDonomo^ 233 

what George was doing as to his calculations, but 
at that very instant the hovering birds came 
to a complete standstill in the air, those behind 
piling in with those in front, and neither of us 
dropped a bird. The next second the birds 
were whirling in every direction, and to make 
the fiasco complete we were equally unsuccessful 
with our second barrels. I have never had such a 
shot at a large flock of brant well bunched, when 
everything seemed exactly as one would have it. 
Nine times out of ten the shot as calculated would 
have been entirely successful, but this was one of 
those tenth times that do occur, and the unex- 
pected slowing up of the birds while I was swinging 
ahead of them sent the shot far afield. 

A single bird came in a few moments later and 
his downfall helped to restore my shaken confi- 
dence. Then a small flock swung by, somewhat 
strung out, each of us making a pleasing double. 
Another single bird dropped to my gun, and two 
more, wing-tipped, but out in deep water, un- 
fortunately, at our volley at a flock that sheered 
off after promising great things. 

By this time the decoys were resting on the 
bare sand. It seemed useless to stay any longer, 
as brant will very rarely fly over any solid land, 



234 iTn tbeMooDs anb on tbe Sbore 

but great numbers of birds were still coming 
from the south and it was hard to turn one's back 
on them. Presently we saw two brant, apparently 
stragglers from a flock ahead of them, turn in 
towards the decoys and make straight across 
the flats. On they came right up to the box, 
where I dropped them right and left. The six 
handsome birds, known to be to my own gun, 
made a very satisfactory ending to the unpromis- 
ing beginnings of the morning. 

More birds than ever were coming when we 
left the box, and if we could have had our decoys 
afloat an hour more we would undoubtedly have 
had a record morning, as the flocks seemed to 
want to decoy, but balked at crossing the bare 
sand. We hoped for great things on the after- 
noon tide, but the wind went down and not a shot 
was had at the " Mud Hole " the rest of the day. 

The experience of the morning will not seem 
an unusual one to gunners who are accustomed to 
following the fowl in localities where the game 
is more plentiful and the shots more frequent, 
but at Monomoy, where the time in the boxes 
is so short and volley firing the rule, it was rather 
an exceptional occurrence. I never succeeded 
in doing as well on any one of three subsequent 



Brant Sbooting at /IDonomo^ 235 

trips. On two of them more birds were killed at 
the boxes in which I was lying than on this first 
visit, but with one exception no particular shots 
seem to stand out in my memory. 

I was at the " North bar " one morning alone 
with Russell. A good many birds were flying, 
and though they were shy, so that we soon gave 
up our number four shot for number twos, we 
managed to bring six birds to bag, with three or 
four wing-broken ones lost out in the deep water. 
Three brant came along, flying one behind the 
other, directly across us, and though they showed 
no intention of decoying, turned in near "enough 
for another long shot. I led the first one as they 
passed, hoping to drop him and take whatever 
Russell might leave, if anything, with the second 
barrel. We both missed. The birds seemed to 
pivot on their tail feathers at right angles to their 
course, and in an ins-tant were headed directly 
away from us, the tips of their wings almost 
touching. I held on to my bird, and as our 
second shots boomed out all three of the birds 
dropped stone dead. Russell told me afterwards 
that he had left the first two birds to me as they 
came past, and held to his own bird when they 
turned, so that we each killed our own birds on 



236 iln tbe Woods an& on tbe Sbore 

the outside, converging on the middle one with 
the outer pellets of each charge. 

That same day we saw an amusing catastrophe 
which occurred to one of the party who was 
lying in the " West box." We were watching a 
flock of birds which finally went into their decoys, 
five of them dropping to the shot. Several of the 
fowl were wing-broken and in a moment we could 
see the three occupants of the box climbing out 
in hot pursuit. One of them was a very large 
man, so large that when we saw him stumble 
and quite disappear under the water he made a 
very large splash. It appeared that in his en- 
thusiasm he had quite forgotten the anchor lines 
on the decoys and had tripped over one of them, 
and though his mischance brought on a very bad 
cold for a day or two, the episode was most educa- 
tional to the rest of us. 

On my last trip, which occurred the latest 
in the season of any of them, the shooting was very 
poor, but the reason of it furnished an interesting 
experience. The northwesterly wind which had 
prevailed during the first two or three days died 
away one afternoon while we were in the boxes, 
leaving the bay as calm as a mill-pond. There 
were hundreds of birds about, plainly visible with 



JSrant Sbootfn^ at /iDonomoi? 237 

their black and white markings as they sat on the 
unruffled water. Then came a shift of the wind 
to the southwest. A flock that was sitting a few 
hundred yards off shore from us began to gabble 
even more vociferously, and in a few moments 
rose up, swinging in broadening circles into the 
air, and then headed due northeast across the 
beach. Another flock soon followed them, going 
through the same evolutions until the birds got 
the desired altitude for their course before the 
favouring wind. This kept on until every flock 
that was in the bay so far as we could see had 
joined the great procession. Other big flocks 
came up over the horizon from the south, all 
following the same straight line of flight, and so 
it was when we left the boxes. All night long 
the brant were flying over our heads across the 
beach, so low that we could hear their calling 
as we lay in our bunks. The next day there was 
not a brant in the bay, and the remainder of the 
trip showed little change in the conditions. 

One who has been to Monomoy, whatever luck 
he may have had there, will never look back upon 
it with anything but pleasant recollections. One 
works hard for one's shooting, for the long early 
morning wadings to the outer boxes, clad in heavy 



238 irn tbe X1C100&5 anb on tbe Sbore 

rubber boots and oilers, are slow and toilsome. 
The waiting in the boxes is sometimes long and 
cold and barren of result, but the follower of the 
wild fowl is used to that. But the great Out-of- 
Doors is there undominated, infusing new vigour 
into one with every breath. The best good fellow- 
ship is there, and when one finds himself in full 
communion with nature and his kind, there 
is little left to be desired. 

It so happens that even as this is being written 
news comes from the Cape that a great storm is 
making inroads upon the little harbour and along 
the beach, so that it may well be that even now 
the old landmarks have vanished and a new 
Monomoy is in the making on the sands. 




FIRST experience in a !' battery " 
or sink-box on an off day might well 
tend to convince the neophyte once 
for all that there were few enjoyable features 
connected with this manner of pursuit of the wild 
fowl. He would doubtless relate how he was 
roused from his slumbers to dress by lamp light, 
commanded by his mentor to push down the un- 
desired breakfast, and rowed, shivering, through 
the chilly darkness to a coffin-shaped box anchored 
in a waste of waters in the middle of a horde of 
bobbing, wooden decoys, where he was abandoned 
to his fate with the parting instructions to watch 
out and keep his head down. He would tell of 
the "crick in the neck" which accompanies the 
too literal obedience to the last command and the 
difficulties in the way of a complete compliance 
with the first. It would appear that all the birds 
he saw had the crafty habit of approaching either 

289 



240 fin tbe XlXIloo^s an& on tbe Sbore 

from behind or at his right shoulder, inside the 
arc of safety, and in crescendo, that the battery 
leaked, that the gentle wavelets slopped over it 
and down his collar, and that altogether it was 
an over-rated form of amusement. 

Indeed, it is conditions and not theories which 
confront us in the battery. Each one of the 
possibilities suggested will make its appearance 
sooner or later. The early rising is imperative. 
" Be set out by sunrise " is the only sure rule, 
as more birds will be shot in the next three hours 
as a general thing than during all the rest of the 
day. 

Until the early rising is established as a habit, 
the taste of food is almost nauseating at so near 
the time when the system is at its lowest, but the 
breakfast should be worried down, for shooting, 
like walking, is not good on an empty stomach, 
" no matter whose it is," and after the first 
morning or two one finds matters readjusted to 
the new requirements. 

Those last hours of starlight are generally the 
coldest of the day, and the gunner should go forth 
warmly clad, with honest wool next his skin, 
over all. A pair of oil-skin trousers, preferably 
very dirty to neutralize their colour, belted at 



Batteri? Sboottng 241 

the waist to avoid the pull of the suspenders on 
the shoulders, and cut off at the knee, will add 
greatly to his comfort if water should get into the 
battery, as it generally does in one way or another. 
The hat is an important item too. The ordinary 
cap does not have brim enough to shade the eyes 
from the glare of the early sun if the battery 
should face that way, and the brim of the ordinary 
felt hat is uncomfortable to lie on and also shuts 
off one's lateral field of vision. The solution of 
the difficulty was found in an old felt hat, the 
brim of which was cut off except enough of it 
in front to make a vizor. This most disreputable 
looking head gear met the various requisites 
admirably. 

A battery is a cramped affair at best, being 
as it is but a little longer and a little wider than 
its occupant, with just sufficient depth to conceal 
him when lying extended on his back, and the 
gunner must make both comfort and convenience 
from these crude conditions or much vexation 
of body and spirit will be his. In spite of the 
obvious desirability of keeping one's head down, 
none the less one must not lie prone, for though 
the gunner may thus become the more invisible to 
the birds, so do the birds to him if they approach 



242 nn tbe 'CXI100&S an& on tbe Sbore 

from any direction except directly in front of him, 
and even then if fiying low, close to the water. 
The result of lying low will be that the birds will be 
allowed to approach too near for the best results, 
many good chances lost entirely, and one's shots 
taken hurriedly as the birds suddenly appear in 
the limited field of vision immediately above and 
in front of the battery. The best way is to arrange 
a cushion or your oil-skin coat or whatever may 
be at hand, under your head, so that your eyes 
will just clear the level of the sides of the box. 
This will be much more comfortable, and open up 
nearly the whole panorama to you, while a slight 
turn of the head in either direction from time to 
time will keep you posted, as well as may be, as 
to coming events from the rear. Your head will 
stick up a little, but the decoy placed crossways 
on the end of the box, and one on either side at 
your shoulders will make it quite inconspicuous 
enough. Another decoy should be placed across 
the foot of the box to conceal the inside of it 
from birds approaching from that direction in 
which its length lies. 

Next after a comfortable and adequate arrange- 
ment for observation come the ways and means 
for instant action. The shell box should be where 



Battery? Sbootina 243 

the hand can find fresh shells of its own motion. 
The muzzle of the gun should rest over the foot 
board, never inside the box for a moment unless 
you wish to risk blowing a hole in your frail craft, 
and a soaking for yourself or worse if you are 
lying in deep water. By tipping the gun a little 
against the side of the box you \vill be able to 
keep it in position right side up, with the grip 
of the stock where your hand can grasp it without 
visible movement as soon as a bird comes in sight. 
This matter of moving about is of the utmost 
importance. If you see that a bird has noticed 
your decoys and is coming in, keep the position 
you are in, no matter what it is, without the turn 
of the head or the movement of a hand, until it 
is time to take the shot. The bird probably has 
its eyes on a bunch of the decoys, and will pay 
no attention to you unless some sudden instinctive 
movement towards better concealment distracts 
its eye. If due observance is given to these general 
details the rest depends on the birds, one's own 
watchfulness and the man behind the gun, and 
the experiences to be had in a battery are so unique 
and varied that the sport has a fascination pecul- 
iarly its own. 

The bays and shallows are never more beautiful 



244 Hn tbe TKHooDs anb on tbe Sbore 

than in the soft light of the early morning. The 
great sun rising from the sea is a spectacle in 
itself. The consciousness of your position out 
there alone upon the waters, with the world and 
his wife still tucked up in their blankets, lends 
an eerieness to the solitude around you, and with 
it all is the zest of the hunter instinct within you, 
keyed up to concert pitch as you lie there with 
eyes and ears alert for w^hat the fates may send 
along. 

My first knowledge of battery shooting was 
picked up on the broad shallow lagoon on the 
New Brunswick coast across which I have so 
often sailed to the shore bird beach. It was 
obviously a fine feeding ground for the wild fowl, 
and the tales told by our boatmen about the 
quantities of ducks, brant and geese which 
appeared there later in the season fully bore out 
its possibilities. Thibedeau spoke with enthu- 
siasm of the brant, " hund'eds and t'ousan's of 
dem " so that the bay was " black, black, black," 
which was very black indeed according to his 
method of expression, any given condition in- 
creasing in degree according to the number of 
times the descriptive adjective might be repeated. 
These rhapsodies always occurred early in Sep- 



Battery Sbooting 245 

tember, when half a dozen black ducks and teal 
was the average bag for a morning in the battery, 
apparently a mere foretaste of what was to come. 
The local gunners said that about October loth 
was the height of the season for brant, and in 1904 
I arranged to be there to meet them. I figured 
that if I began shooting on September 25th, 
there would be two weeks during which the sport 
would be constantly growing better, with my 
third week on top of the wave. Ordinarily this 
plan of campaign would have been as good as 
could be devised, guarding as it did against the 
possibility of premature climax, but that year 
the birds were late in coming, and though I had 
good sport, it was not until the last two days that 
I began to appreciate what might have been, 
had the cold weather come on a little earlier. 

On arriving at the old farmhouse I learned that 
the genial Thibedeau, my boatman of former 
years, had died the summer before, but young 
Jack, the jimior member of my host's family, 
had grown into a strapping young fellow since 
my last visit, and no one could have asked for a 
more willing and helpful assistant than he proved 
to be. The boy comes to manhood early in the 
back country where there is always plenty for 



246 irn tbe TKIloot)5 ant) on tbe Sbore 

every pair of strong hands to do. Since I had seen 
him Jack had earned money to buy his own boat, 
had made his own battery and decoys with his 
own hands, and now stood in his hip-boots a full 
equipped bay-man. 

Perhaps a few words more in respect to the 
battery and the decoys may be in point before 
we begin to use them. " Sink-box " is more 
descriptive of the contrivance than the more 
formidable " battery," as it is primarily a box, 
to be sunk to within three or four inches of the 
surface of the water. To accomplish this, other 
boxes are nailed on the outside, all along the sides 
and ends, in which ballast is placed to bring it to 
the desired level. The freeboard is so low that 
the least roughness of the water would send its 
slop over the rail. To prevent this four light 
frames or " wings " covered with canvas are 
hinged to the ballast boxes to float upon the water 
at the sides and ends, and with this outer defence 
adjusted it is surprising to find how much buffet- 
ing the box will stand. An anchor is tied at the 
head of the box and a second one at the foot is 
often a convenience in case it should be desirable 
to change from lying in the usual position directly 
down the wind, either to avoid facing the direct 




THE I5ATTERV 




AN Oil MORNING. 



Battery Sbooting 247 

glare of the sun or to gain better opportunity 
for observation of the flight of the fowl. Ordinarily 
the position into which the box will swing from 
the anchor is the best, as the gunner will then 
face down the wind, and have his best opportunity 
when the birds swing up into it, as they have to 
do to alight to the decoys. The arrangement of 
these is a matter in regard to which most gunners 
have pet theories of their own. First of all have 
plenty of them. Place them thickly around the 
box to help conceal it, tailing them off above 
and below it, so that the main flock will float 
in the shape of a kite with the box in the upper 
end. Then set out two or three little groups 
down to leeward of the main body on the left 
quarter, if you are a right-handed shot. If you 
are using goose decoys with your ducks or brant, 
set them out well at the head of the main flock, 
separated a little from it, with three or four 
together out on one side in whichever direction 
you can swing the best, for geese have a tendency 
to light to windward of a sitting flock, and this 
arrangement will bring them well in. Black 
ducks, on the other hand, have the habit of sneak- 
ing up to the tail of a flock, particularly if flying 
alone, and the little groups on your quarter will 



248 Hn tbe IKHoo^s anb on tbe Sbore 

generally prove more attractive to them than 
the main body of decoys. These suggestions will 
ordinarily prove adequate to bring the birds 
within good range if they will come at all, and into 
positions convenient for the shot, but anything 
may happen at times and all past experience seem 
an exploded theory, such are the vagaries of the 
fowl. 

There was a fair wind across the bay when we 
took the boat that first morning, which was fortu- 
nate as we had the box in tow, but we made good 
time to the shoal on which Jack had decided to 
set out, a little over a quarter of a mile inshore 
from the outer beach. The water was shallow 
enough for wading about in setting out the decoys, 
so we finished that in double time, and I was soon 
left alone in the box, while Jack poled away in the 
gloom to the beach to watch for cripples. I made 
myself comfortable on my improvised pillow, 
accustomed myself to the various positions for 
future observation, and waited. It was growing 
a little lighter, but the stillness of the night re- 
mained unbroken. A herring gull or two flew 
by silently, its white plumage gray in the dim 
light. A blue heron " quawked " farther up the 
shore, the only sound of life as yet. As it grew 



Battery Sbootfng 249 

lighter small flocks of terns skimmed by me, 
silent as the ghosts of their ancestors. Of a sudden 
I saw a great flock of large birds coming towards 
me from the east over the beach. They were 
flying in a V and my first thought was that they 
were geese. Then the converging lines wavered 
in their flight, and I knew that they were only 
shags, the black comorant. They passed directly 
over the decoys, — so near that I could hear the 
sound of their flapping wings above me. For the 
next half -hour flock after flock of them came over, 
a wonderful procession, many coming even nearer 
than the first ones. Some beetle-heads and a 
yellow-leg or two had begun to call upon the beach, 
but as yet there was neither sound nor sight of the 
birds whose feeding grounds I had invaded. Then 
out of nowhere, as it nearly always seems, I saw 
three black specks, close to the water far down 
to windward. As they grew larger I could see 
two swiftly moving planes on the sides of each. 
I slid dow^n on my pillow, still keeping my eyes 
on the objects, and grasped the gun stock, feeling 
to make sure the safety catch was in position for 
quick use. The next instant three black ducks 
whirled up on their tail feathers, wings and legs 
outstretched. The leading one was already in the 



250 nn tbe 1KI100&5 ant) on tbe Sbore 

water when I sat up. The other two saw me 
and tried to turn, to drop clean killed as their 
ways crossed. Up came the other, all legs and 
wings and quacking, only to go down again at the 
second barrel. This was certainly good enough 
for the first chance, and it was an added satisfac- 
tion to find that the water was still shallow enough 
where they fell to enable me to retrieve my birds 
myself. When lying in deep water of course one 
cannot leave the box, and your boatman has to 
come up to retrieve the birds, often spoiling a 
good shot by being in your immediate neighbour- 
hood. A few minutes afterwards a grayish duck 
appeared from down the bay, high in the air. 
It paid no attention to the decoys, and the shot 
was a gun-strainer, but at the report the duck's 
head dropped and down it came like a plummet. 
It proved to be a female pin-tail. A little bunch 
of gray coots left two behind as they rushed 
across the decoys. 

It was almost time to miss and the moment 
for it was at hand. I had kept as good a lookout 
as I could to the rear, and a last observation had 
shown nothing in the way in that direction. Sud- 
denly there was the sound as of a small tornado, 
and the next moment a big flock of black ducks 



Battery Sbootfna 251 

had swooped down from behind, settling over the 
box Hke a great umbrella. Some of them were so 
near that I could have struck them with my gun 
as they swooped by. Perhaps I would have done 
better if I had tried it. As it was, a few of the 
foremost birds were in the water among the decoys 
when I sat up, while the rest filled the air, yet too 
scattered for a bunched shot. Two seemed about 
to cross, but before I could lead on them their 
ways diverged again. Again and again in suc- 
cessive seconds I sighted for such a shot, but it 
was never there. By this time the consternation 
caused by my sudden appearance had spread 
through the flock. The birds which had lighted 
were leaping into the air and those which had not 
had changed their minds about it. It was clear 
by now that I should have to take what I could 
get, and a single belated duck leaping from the 
decoys was the only toll I took from as large a 
flock of black ducks as I ever saw come to decoys. 
For once there was too much of a good thing, 
for the birds were too many and too near.. 

After this experience I redoubled my watch 
on the approaches from the rear. The pile of 
birds at my feet was growing nicely, all black 
ducks except the pin-tail and the coots, as singles 



252 Hn tbe Moot)s ant) on tbe Sbore 

and small bunches dropped into the decoys. 
The birds were acting well, except for the grand 
fiasco, and I was shooting much better than I 
had expected to after two years away from the 
shot-gun. 

During the morning one of those irresistible 
impulses which fortunately come to us at times 
led me to peer over the starboard side of the box. 
It was well I did, for five great geese were almost 
within shot. They were flying well bunched, 
close to the water and silently, headed outside 
the leading goose decoys. Their silence and sus- 
tained flight showed that the chance of their 
decoying was small, and that the shot must be 
taken as they passed at the nearest point, if at 
all. If they had been on the left side of the box, 
one could not have asked for a better chance, as 
they would pass within forty yards, but unfor- 
tunately they were on the right-hand side. If 
one shoots from the right shoulder only, it is 
almost impossible to cover more than about 
a third of yotir starboard ground from a battery, 
as you cannot turn bodily in your narrow quarters, 
and your left hand will leave the fore end of your 
gun as the swing of it goes beyond a certain point. 
So it is that a bird passing up on the gunner's 



Battery Sbootina 253 

right hand gives him the hardest problem he can 
have. He m^ust not rise too soon or the bird will 
sheer off out of range. He must not wait too 
long either, or he will find his lead on the bird 
lost as the gun comes to the dead centre of the 
swing. 

The geese would offer just this shot if they kept 
coming, every wing beat to my advantage up to 
a certain instant, and then " up guards " or never. 
When the appointed moment came four black 
necks were outstretched side by side, the fifth 
bird a little in the rear. As I sat up they broke 
their formation, but one big bird crumpled up at 
the first barrel and splashed down into the water. 
I swung as far ahead of a second bird as I could, 
but it was not quite far enough, as I knew when 
I fired, and though he dropped for an instant and 
feathers flew, he recovered his poise and followed 
along after the others far up the bay. A French- 
man got him two days afterwards in a little cove 
where he had finally settled down. 

By this time the morning was well along. The 
sun was high and shining brightly. The tide 
had gone down and the wind with it. The flight 
was apparently over and my visitors were few and 
far between. I was smoking my pipe and watch- 



254 irn tbe MooDs anO on tbe Sbore 

ing up the bay when I heard a sound coming from 
well inshore below me. Before I could turn it 
came again, the unmistakable harsh k-r-r-r-uk- 
k-r-r-r-uk of the brant. There they were, six of 
them, whirling about over the inner flats with 
that peculiar, almost swallow-like flight which 
is sometimes theirs. One moment their bellies 
would gleam in the sunlight silver white, and the 
next they would look as black as crows. They 
had not seen the decoys and the lack of apparent 
purpose in their careering made me believe they 
might be open to suggestion, so I took the chance 
and called to them. It was most successful. 
The birds wheeled in the direction from which 
the sound had come, lowered close to the water 
and headed for the tail of the decoys. If they 
kept on nothing could be better, but there was 
no wind to hold them and they might do anything. 
Just as a perfect shot was well-nigh certain, off 
they turned like lightning to the baleful right- 
hand side. It was disappointing, but the chance 
was still a good one, for the birds held well bunched, 
and three of them came down, while the sur- 
vivors circled arotmd the box out of shot three 
or four times before finally leaving. As I walked 
back from retrieving the birds it was clear enough 




SETTING OUT DECOYS IN DEEP WATER. 




TAKING UP DECOYS. 



Battery SbootittQ 255 

what had turned them, as the box was barely 
afloat even with my weight out of it, and its out- 
Hnes plainly visible beneath the still surface 
of the water. The shooting was over and Jack 
was soon poling out from the shore in answer to 
my signal. We took up the decoys, tossed the 
wings of the box inboard and left it for the 
morrow, tied to a long pole thrust deep into the 
mud. Our eighteen birds were earnest enough 
for another morning there, and the presence of 
the brant in the bag was an encouraging fore- 
runner of possibilities to come. 

As a matter of fact it was nearly a week before 
I fired at brant again. In the meanwhile every 
morning except Sunday, which is a close day in 
New Brunswick, found me in the battery. The 
weather continued fair and wann and the shooting 
naturally suffered from such comfortable but 
otherwise imfavourable conditions, but with each 
day came the ever changing beauties of the sun- 
rise, the exhilaration of the openness and space, 
the joyousness of the winds and waves, and with 
all this some one or more occurrences connected 
with the sport to make it notable. During this 
first week my bag varied from fourteen on the 
next best day to six on the poorest, mostly all 



256 -ffn tbe 'Moo&s an& on tbe Sbore 

black ducks. One morning in a bag of twelve 
birds eleven were fall sheldrake. The birds were 
trash and I was taking any kind of a shot at them 
as there was nothing better stirring. I remember 
that a little flock of three came skurrying along, 
passing by on the right, and I had hardly swung 
on them before I reached the fatal dead centre. 
With so little at stake I kept swinging until the 
left hand lost its grasp on the gun entirely, and 
much to my surprise dropped two of the birds 
with the one barrel I could fire before the un- 
supported muzzles fell out of balance. I had 
hardly reloaded before a black duck offered al- 
most exactly the same shot, on which I scored 
in the same way. I felt that I had solved the 
difficulties of right-handers most satisfactorily 
when a second black duck swung in just at my 
right shoulder. This time something went wrong, 
for the duck kept on, while the gun slipped from 
my shoulder with the recoil and struck me such 
a terrific blow on the neck that the memory of it 
has held me to more conservative methods ever 
since. 

On one very calm day four single black ducks 
came in to my decoys from down the bay at 
different times, each flying close down to the 



Batters Sbooting 257 

water. On each occasion it had happened that 
I had just been watching in that very direction, 
but had not seen the approaching bird until it 
was close in. I wondered how this could be, for I 
was prepared to swear that there had been no 
living thing above my horizon or within it. As 
I lay there thinking about it I happened to notice 
that certain fishing huts some distance down 
the beach were " hull down " to me at my low 
level. It was rather startling to arrive at the con- 
clusion that it was the curve of our planet which 
had concealed the approaching fowl, but without 
doubt such was the fact. 

It is not my intention to rehearse the slaying 
of each fowl nor the other details of those most 
enjoyable days, for nothing is ordinarily more 
dull to every one except the orator. To him each 
episode may be the theme of a new symphony of 
reminiscence, but he who can run will seldom 
stop to read. Let a few more happenings suffice, 
then, in this endeavour to give a taste of the flavour 
of the sport. 

On a Saturday we came home from the box in 
a steady rain, the wind having swung into the 
northeast, with every evidence of a heavy storm 
coming from that direction. The next morning 



258 Hn tbe MooDs ano on tbe Sbore 

it was blowing a gale and raining in torrents. In 
the late afternoon the rain stopped but the wind 
kept on, backing the high tide well up to the level 
of the ploughed fields, and covering the ordinarily 
placid lagoon with white caps. One could hear 
the surf pounding and roaring on the outer beach 
nearly four miles away. It was the change of 
weather we had hoped for with a vengeance, and 
having at last roused the elements, now, human- 
like, we prayed for their subsidence. The next 
morning it was a question whether we could cross 
the lagoon or not against the still heavy wind, 
and an even more doubtful one whether the sink- 
box would live in it if we got there. I took an 
extra man, for the trip meant hard poling to 
windward, and in due course we got across. The 
box had sunk, but we managed to get it afloat 
again, and after setting it out my men left me alone 
in it to take up their station on the shore. On 
our way out we had seen small flocks of brant 
flying by, and two or three great swarms of blue 
bills had also made their appearance. These with 
the leaden sky and heavy wind seemed most 
favourable openings for a good morning's sport. 
They proved to be, with just enough from the 
buffets of the wind and waves to make one feel 



Batterg Sbooting 259 

one was fairly earning it. Twenty-two birds, an 
even dozen of them brant and no trash, was the 
bag, a modest one, as bags should be, but with 
plenty of excitement in the bagging. Six of the 
brant piled up at my feet in the box had been one 
flock which came in to the lower decoys. Two 
dropped to the first barrel and a third to the other 
as they scattered. As the survivors had drifted 
down the wind I called to them, while I hurriedly 
reloaded, and back they came within easy range 
as I sat there in full sight but motionless until the 
moment for the shot. Then two of them crossed 
and a quick double brought down all three. I 
was bound to retrieve the birds myself, even at the 
certainty of a wetting, particularly as one of the 
birds was only crippled and was rapidly getting 
down to leeward. I did not know just how deep 
the water was when I stepped over, holding on 
to the box till I found bottom. Two inches more 
would have flooded my boots, but as it was it 
could be managed. The first thing was to stop 
the cripple, which done I waded to the bird 
farthest down to leeward, picking up the others 
on the way back as they came drifting down 
with the wind. 

One of the great flocks of blue-bills came down 



260 Hn tbe Moobs an& on tbe Sbore 

over me from behind that morning just as the 
horde of black ducks had done the week before. 
There was a swis-s-s-h, then a roar, and I was in 
the middle of a veritable bombardment of ducks. 
To my reply three dropped down among the decoys 
while the hundreds that were left dashed in 
towards the shore. The birds were flying so closely 
together that at a distance they seemed to be a 
solid mass, and as they swirled and swooped, 
looked like a great piece of fabric wafted about 
by the wind against the gray storm clouds. 

Soon after this a single blue-bill very nearly 
put an end to my sport and to me with it. I was 
lying down in the box considering the desirability 
of sitting up for a moment to light my pipe. It 
was already filled when a bird attracted my 
attention down to leeward, and I thought it best 
to keep down until I could see what its intentions 
were. This all happened quickly, but even more 
quickly a blue-bill came over from behind, his 
breast not six inches from my upturned face. I 
do not know what the force of the blow of a two 
pound duck going a mile a minute is in foot 
pounds, but I imagine that the sum of this little 
knowledge would be a decidedly dangerous thing 
applied to the back of one's neck, where I would 



JSatter^ Sbooting 26i 

have gotten it except for that moment of hesita- 
tion. 

The brant came to bag every day after this, 
as the storm seemed to have started them along, 
though Jack insisted that the number of birds was 
nothing compared to what there ought to be in 
the bay by that time. 

The first arrivals of the brant have the habit of 
going out to the ocean at night, coming in again 
just before sunrise, or earlier still if there is a 
moon. There was a moon just at that time, and 
one morning we planned to be in the box in time 
to forestall them on their return flight, for which 
we had been too late hitherto. I do not remember 
what the unholy hour was when Jack left me in 
the box, but to all appearances it might have 
been midnight. The stars were bright and the 
moon was sending a broad wake over the smooth 
water, but the moon was behind me, and down to 
leeward everything was as black as Egypt. Bar- 
ring the occasional quack of a black duck there 
was not a sound to be heard. I had about decided 
that I would make up a little sleep till sunrise 
when the familiar kr-r-r-r-uk, kr-r-r-r-uk sounded 
off to the eastward in the darkness. On came the 
sounds, nearer and nearer, until the flock passed 



262 In tbe 1KI100&S ant) on tbe Sbore 

behind me in full cry down the bay. The birds 
could see the decoys in the moonlight, but the 
box was equally visible at the height at which 
they were flying, and this sad experience was 
repeated a dozen times as flock after flock hailed 
the decoys from the darkness and w^ent on. I had 
about given up all hope of a shot at the incomers 
when a lusty kr-r-r-uk resounded directly behind 
me, and in a moment it sounded nearer still. I 
had found that I could cover the wake of the moon 
by swinging around to the left side, and just as 
I sat up with gtin in hand to try for a shot if the 
bird came into it, a brant Vv^hirled into the golden 
pathway. He dropped at the flash, and in a 
moment I had my game in hand, as fine and heavy 
a brant as I have ever seen, and the only bird I 
have ever killed by morning moonlight. 

Just before sunrise the wind shifted to the north- 
west. It blew harder and harder as the hours 
went on and the early morning movement of the 
birds had ceased so completely that it was more 
than doubtful w^hether I should add to my bag 
or not. Several flocks of cormorants had given 
their false alarms as they turned in from the sea 
over the outer beach to the lagoon, when the 
long line of another flock of large birds rose above 



Battery Sbootlna 263 

the sky line of the dunes. It needed but a mo- 
ment's observation of their jElight to prove that 
the birds were geese, and as anything may happen 
when birds are in the air, I dropped my pipe and 
made myself as small as possible in the box, 
though the chances of a shot were of the slightest. 
The geese followed the general line which the flocks 
of cormorants had taken, crossing the beach about 
a quarter of a mile below me and flying well in 
the air. They showed no signs of having seen the 
decoys at all, and the only hope seemed to be to 
attract their attention. As they crossed below 
me, straight down the wind, I called to them. The 
effect was instantaneous and a chorus of answering 
cries came back in quick response. The leading 
birds stopped in their course and turned into the 
teeth of the strong wind, labouring heavily, while 
their followers closed up behind them in close 
ranks. I had counted twenty-three in the flock 
and their honking sounded like the full cry of a 
pack of beagles. Their flight was slow against the 
heavy wind and the moments seemed interminable 
as I lay there in plain sight of them. They were 
soon near enough for me to see why the box had 
even so long escaped their notice. The leaders had 
riveted their attention upon a little group of goose 



264 irn tbe '^KIloo^s an^ on tbe Sbore 

decoys on my left quarter and the other birds 
were apparently blindly following them. Now the 
first rank lowered in its flight with sudden pitching 
and poising of the broad wings, followed by the 
birds behind them until there were four tiers of 
them, looking like so many approaching para- 
chutes. These successive lowerings continued 
until the leading birds flew close to the water, 
four of them flying together with long black 
necks outstretched, close in to the decoys, the 
rest of the flock following down from their higher 
level in an undulating line. That was the ap- 
pointed moment, and at the first shot two of the 
big birds dropped with splashes that it was good 
to see. A third one was hard hit and came down 
at the second barrel, while the rest of the birds, 
swung down the wind, re-forming again, and were 
soon lost to sight far out over the sea. With a 
little more luck it would have been perfectly 
within the possibilities to have dropped all four 
of the leading birds with the first barrel in the 
position in which they were, as the four necks 
could seemingly have been surrounded with the 
span of one's hands. It had been wonderfully 
exciting to lie there on the verge of discovery at 
any moment and then to have things turn out so 
well. 



Battery Sbootin^ 265 

There was one morning before I left when all 
one's best laid plans seemed to go wrong, and 
although I had some good sport as it was, two 
occurrences gave rather a bad taste to it. I had 
seen a flock of seven brant coming from across 
the lagoon, and as I kept an eye on them over 
the edge of the box it became clear that they 
would come in high on my right side if they 
decoyed at all, or pass over the box if they kept 
on their course. In either event the shot would 
\)e a hard one, and as it became manifest that they 
were not going to decoy it seemed best to wait 
until the birds were directly over me before 
sitting up, and take the shot as they kept on 
across me. On they came in a straight line, wing 
to wing, and as they were fairly over the right of 
the box I sat up and covered the point where they 
ought to be the next instant. Nothing came there 
at all and with the tail of my eye I saw the seven 
big birds pivot on their tail feathers back whence 
they had come, escaping unscathed after having 
been within ten yards of me. A little after this 
I was watching another good-sized flock of brant 
approaching from well up to windward at my left 
shoulder. They were unquestionably coming to 
the decoys, and a good shot was a certainty as the 



266 ifn tbe MooDs an& on tbe Sbore 

birds were flying low and well together. Of a 
sudden I became conscious of whirling objects 
and much splashing over and in among the decoys 
at the foot of the box. Another flock of brant 
had come into the box on my blind side just at 
this most inauspicious time, welcome as they 
would have been a few minutes sooner or later. 
I sat up instinctively, bad judgment as it doubtless 
was to do so, and dropped one bird as it leaped up 
from the decoys. The others of the flock, panic- 
stricken at sight of me and at the shot, darted 
off in every direction, while the first flock had 
come so near before turning that the best chance 
for my second barrel seemed to be at one of its 
departing laggards which tumbled some seventy 
yards away. Each flock coming alone would 
probably have been good for three or four birds, 
so there was but little real satisfaction in the 
bungling double which was actually accomplished. 
It was possible to squeeze in about two hours 
with the decoys on the last morning of my stay be- 
fore starting for the steamer, and seven brant 
and two black ducks were their very satisfactory 
reward. The number of birds in the bay had 
doubled since the morning before, and their cries 
could be heard almost every moment from almost 



Batters Sbootfna 267 

any direction. New flocks kept coming in over 
the outer beach, some flying in compact masses, 
some wing to wing in long extended Hnes, others 
in angles or in echelon like the flight of geese. 
Jack's assurance that the brant were just begin- 
ning to come did not make it any easier to leave 
them, but unfortunately the call of duty was 
more insistent than theirs could be. I could 
understand the feeling of Odysseus filling his ears 
with wax against the voices of the sirens, and 
when I remember the stirring cries of the wild 
fowl those roseate mornings, there are times when 
the safest thing would seem to be to follow his 
example. 




^be IHuntet) 

jP the swift river they toiled, 
Leaving the night's camp behind them, 
Working their way up the stream 

Still farther into the forest. 

Agile, alert and quick-eyed 

Stood the two stalwart canoemen. 

Sons of the old voyageurs. 

Bending their broad backs in measure; 

Now fending off from the rocks, 

Now turning short past an eddy, 

Now holding hard at a shoot 

For the quick leap up the rapid ; 

Past the deep tree-shadowed pools 

Where the great trout swam together, 

Lying with heads to the stream 

Watching what they might devour; 

Past the black shores of the bogans. 

Tracked by the moose and the red deer, 

Home of the musquash and heron ; 

268 



Ube IbunteD 269 

Through the long ribands of alder, 
Store of the provident beaver; 
By the gray columns of pine 
Blasted by time or the lightning, 
Ghosts of the forest primeval, 
Pulpits of owls for their hooting, 
Watch-towers of the kingfishers. 
Up through the woodland they pressed, 
Watching the banks of the river, 
Tracing the sign on the shore, 
Peering in through the thick alders. 
Ready with rifles at hand 
For the first view of the quarry. 
Onward and onward they sped, 
Keen in the zest of their hunting. 

Bright rose the sun at the dawn 
Gilding the tops of the mountains, 
Fire-scarred, riven and bare. 
Desolate under the heavens ; 
Lifting the mists from the valley, 
Darting its rays through the branches, 
Breaking the gloom in the forest. 
Out of the stillness came sounds, 
Sounds of the forest awaking. 
Then flew the soft winged owl 



270 In tbe Moo^s ant) on tbe Sborc 

Home to its nest in the thicket, 

Lone of the birds of the air 

Greeting the dawning with silence. 

Up from the cradUng lake 

Rose the wild duck with its quacking, 

Circling aloft for its flight 

Swift to the brooks and the marshes. 

Leaving the loon at its bath, 

Laughing with glee in the sunshine. 

Ruffling his gray-friar's plumes, 

Moose-bird, the thief of the greenwood 

Screamed to his shrill calling mate 

Filching the notes of their neighbours. 

Calling the sluggards from sleep, 

Woodpecker, reveille sounding. 

Busily breaking his fast 

Roused the swift wrath of the squirrel 

Waked from his sleep in his nest. 

Scolding at all the disturbance. 

Then from their couches of moss 

Rose up the antlered woods-cattle, 

Moose, caribou and the deer. 

Snuffing the wind through their nostrils, 

Making assurance more sure 

Ere they began with their browsing. 

Then rose the queen of them all, 



Ube 1bunte& 271 



Bride of the monarch of forests, 
Bride of the year that had passed, 
Latest to yield to his wooing, 
While at her side her first born, 
Pride of her heart and her darling, 
Pledge of the love of her lord 
Ambled ungainly about her. 
Smoothing his glossy brown coat 
Lovingly toiled the fond mother, 
Seeking her love to express ; 
Making him ready for breakfast ; 
Breakfast of browse and sweet grass, 
Browse of the moosewood and alder. 
Sprouts of the poplar and maple, 
Twigs of the white birch and yellow; 
These the good mother provided 
Out of the store of the forest 
Pulling the branches on high 
Down to the mouth of her first bom. 
Then with his hunger appeased 
Led she the way to the river. 
Threading the wandering paths 
Tramped by the beasts of the forest, 
Came she at length to the shore 
Where the swift current in turning 
Thrust back the flood at its bend, 



272 iin tbe TKIloot)s anb on tbe Sbore 

Making a quiet dead-water. 
Into the water they splashed, 
Thirsting and heated from travel, 
Thrusting their muzzles beneath, 
Glad of its cooling refreshment, 
Plunging their heads to the bottom. 
Seeking the roots of the lilies ; 
Then on the bank laid them down 
On the damp weeds and long grasses, 
Under the alders and elms, 
Cool in the heat of the noon day. 
Placid and peaceful they lay, 
Drowsy and filled with contentment, 
Flicking the flies with their ears, 
Taking the midday siesta. 
As at her treasure she gazed, 
Sleepy eyed, nearing to dream-land. 
Memories rose from the past, 
Thoughts of her lord and his wooing. 
Scarce had a twelve-month gone by 
Since she had left her good mother. 
Wearied of all that she knew. 
Restless with feelings she knew not. 
Into the forest she strayed 
Wondering, timid, and wistful, 
Knowing not whither she roamed 



Ube li)unte& 273 



Nor of the quest of her roaming. 
Bright shone the moon in the sky- 
When she came forth at the river 
Winding its gHttering path 
Through the black walls of the forest. 
Silent were all living things, 
Silent the forest around her, 
Silent the night overhead. 
Pall-like with awful oppression. 
Then from her fluttering heart. 
Swelling with Nature's great forces, 
Called she aloud through the night, 
Voicing the longing she knew not. 
Thrice did she call and again, 
Easing her breast of its throbbing, 
Filling the forest with sound 
Echoing up through the valley ; 
Then stood in wondering fear 
Frightened to think of her boldness. 
Hark! at the moment her heart 
Doubled the stress of its beating. 
Out of the depths of the woods 
Poured forth a thunderous bellow; 
Crashed out the falling of trees, 
Rending and tearing of branches, 
Sounds as of broad bladed horns 



274 Hn tbe 1IGloot>s an^ on tbe Sborc 

Smiting the tree trunks in passing. 

Fearful in mind but with eyes 

Bright with a kindling fire 

Called she again through the night: 

Once more the resonant answer 

Sounded abroad in its might 

Nearer and nearer approaching, 

Till through the thick of the woods 

On the far bank of the river 

Burst forth the King of the forest, 

Out to the beach of the river. 

There as he stood in his strength, 

Radiant in the clear moonlight 

With mighty antlers upspread, 

Golden beneath its bright lustre, 

Gazed she entranced at his might, 

Filled with a wondering tumult. 

Then as the path of a star 

Dashed from its place in the heavens 

Flashes across the dark clouds, 

So to her being came knowledge. 

Him had her fate fore-ordained ! 

For him her quest and her longing! 

There stood her mate through the world ; 

Nature had made her great answer! 

Now was she glad and content. 



XLbc Ibunt 275 



Eager in joyous surrender, 
Out from the shadow she stepped, 
Into the Hght of the moonbeams. 
Seeing her there as she moved, 
Lithe, silken coated and graceful, 
Fires burned forth from his eyes, 
And with a roar, high up-rearing 
Into the river he leaped. 
Dashing the spray to the tree tops; 
Leaped he again and again 
Leaving his path molten silver ; 
Breasted the force of the stream 
Where the swift current ran deepest, 
Then gaining foothold at length 
Sprang from the water before her. 
Into his red gleaming eyes 
Looked she but once without faltering, 
Then bowed the drooping brown head, 
Token of willing submission, 
While on her shoulder her lord. 
Panting with rut and with conquest 
Rested his mighty maned neck. 
First of her maiden caresses. 
So for the moment they stood 
Knowing their seeking was ended ; 
Then in the forest they plunged; 



276 ifn tbe Moobs an& on tbe Sbore 

Thus was her wooing and wedding. 
So the sweet thoughts of the past 
Quickened to Hfe in the present ; 
Now the closed eyes saw again 
All things that thus had befallen 
While on her ear seemed to fall 
Gladdest of sounds to her hearing, 
As of the step of her lord 
Seeking her side from his wanderings. 
There was the smite of his hoofs 
Crunching the gravel beneath them ; 
That was a step in the stream 
Splashing the water around him. 
Nearer and nearer he came, — 
Then with a bound she awakened, 
Conscious of fate drawing near, 
Knowing no lover approached her. 
On the soft breath of the wind 
Came the dread scent of the hunters 
Making their way up the stream, 
Striking the rocks with their pickpoles. 
Giving the signal for flight, 
Snorting the taint from her nostrils 
Into the thicket she leaped. 
Into the forest's deep refuge, 
Then with new safetv assured 



Ube Ibunte^ 277 



Waited the steps of her offspring. 
Nothing she saw nor she heard 
Making a sign of his coming. 
All remained peaceful and still; 
Had she but dreamed of the danger? 
Slowly retracing her path, 
Watchful and eager and anxious, 
Hopeful and fearful in turn 
Sought she the trail of her dear one. 
Ah ! then the poor heart stood still. 
Loud the report of a rifle 
Rang through the echoing groves, 
Then a low cry — and then silence, 
But as the bullet had sped 
So to the heart of the mother 
Came that last cry of her babe 
Calling for her in his anguish. 
Helpless and frantic with grief. 
Filled with the terror of instinct, 
Nearing the spot as she dared 
Stole the distracted young mother; 
Heard the harsh voices of men, 
Smelled a strange sickening odour; 
Then the sharp click of the poles 
Growing more faint in the distance, 
Till the great stillness returned 



278 Hn tbe Moobs an& on tbe Sbore 

Over the valley and forest, 
Blotting out all that had been 
Save from that heart overflowing. 
Bearing her burden of woe, 
Stunned by the blow that had fallen, 
Slowly she turned towards the hills, 
On through the lengthening shadows, 
Striving to fly from her grief, 
Finding it ever before her. 
Deeper the shades hemmed her round ; 
Deeper the hopeless dumb sorrow. 
Then for a moment she paused ; 
Drawn by the spell that was o'er her. 
Back through the forest she sped, 
Back to the bank of the river. 
There was his couch in the grass 
Where he had rested beside her. 
Tramped by the footprints of men. 
Reddened and broken the grasses; 
There had they borne him along 
Where the canoe prow had rested ; 
There the trail ended its course 
Lost in the swift running river. 
Over the water she gazed 
Through the gray mists of the evening, 
When from her grief -stricken heart 



Ubc Ibuntet) 279 



Burst a great cry for her lost one. 
Once and again did she call 
Into the silence and darkness, 
And a great owl from his perch 
Lone of live things made her answer. 



C^e enti. 



33 





000 586 990 4 




